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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: HELTER SKELTER (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Mika Ninagawa

FEATURING: Erika Sawajiri, , , Kiko Mizuhara, Nao Ômori

PLOT:  The struggle to keep up appearances and growing pressure from younger models pushes supermodel Lilico’s physical and mental well-being to the breaking point.

Still from Helter Skelter (2012)

COMMENTS: A helter skelter is a slide. A lighthouse-shaped structure that you climb up through the inside to then slide down on a curving ramp nailed to the outside. The Beatles’ song of the same name gives it away in its opening lyric: “When I get to the bottom, I go back to the top of the slide.” Regardless of what Charles Manson thought it meant, it’s supposed to be about something that’s fun for a brief moment, but it’s also a reminder that everything that goes up must eventually come back down, and sometimes right quickly at that.

If the higher you go means the faster you fall, then Lilico is about to come crashing down at light speed. She is living her peak life: impossibly beautiful, her face graces countless magazine covers and advertisements. She’s about to branch out into film acting, and every girl in Japan knows her by name. So when she spots a sizeable flaw in her perfect skin, it’s a literal crack in her facade, the augur of an explosive downfall. Helter Skelter is all about that implosion, the slow-motion train wreck of her discovery that perfect beauty has always had an expiration date, and that page on the calendar has finally turned.

It’s hard to work up a lot of pity for someone who is rich, famous, and ridiculously attractive, but Helter Skelter does a solid job in showing how Lilico’s life of luxury is not especially enjoyable. She is monstrous but also desperate, and how her misery expresses itself is the primary source of Helter Skelter’s weirdness. She takes out her rage on her doggedly loyal assistant Hana through sexual abuse and humiliation, and starts to have out-of-control hallucinations at inconvenient moments. The fact that she is being tracked by a pair of detectives who resemble the cast of a Japanese reboot of “The X-Files” is appropriate, because Lilico herself is otherworldly. These moments of panic and cruelty are so outlandish, so extreme, that the biggest surprise is that we are expected to view them realistically. Perhaps tales like The Substance have trained us to expect a supernatural element, but Helter Skelter offers no twist. The film straightforwardly insists that Lilico’s beauty has a scientific (if illegal and amoral) explanation, and that her behavior is all her own. The arrival of her very own Eve Harrington, the naturally stunning Kozue, who achieves success despite expressing apathy toward the  fashion business, reinforces that point. Kozue doesn’t expect to be beautiful forever, and while she knows some regurgitation goes with the job, she plans to give it up someday. By contrast, considering everything Lilico has done to secure her position, her fear of decline and the collapse of her enhanced body utterly short-circuit her.

Japanese culture is both fascinated and repelled by celebrity, and Helter Skelter enlists exactly the right people to delve into its darker side. Director Ninagawa was a fashion photographer herself, and she films with the barely controlled energy of a wild photo shoot. Sawajiri also knows the world, having been a successful model before turning to acting. (She gained notoriety for a press conference where she was viewed as disrespectful to reporters and her castmates alike, so audiences in Japan would experience art imitating life in Lilico’s ultimate, disastrous encounter with the media.) Their bona fides are beyond reproach, and there’s no question that the team produces a motion picture with a unique sensibility, bringing their personal experience to the story. The thing is, while Helter Skelter is a beautifully crafted film, a certain sameness creeps in as the story seems to be building toward something cataclysmic, but never quite gets there. Lilico’s fate is inevitable—it is painfully obvious that she is going to crash—but given the many omens of doom and the explosive nature of Ninagawa’s camera and Sawajiri’s volcanic performance, the impact ultimately feels blunted. Lilico’s fate can’t quite live up to the drama of what precedes it.

Helter Skelter is based on a popular manga by Kyoko Okazaki, and it feels like it. It jumps storylines and techniques like a page turning, and the bold and vibrant colors and off-kilter angles feel like they could have jumped straight out of the pages of a comic book. The film’s most striking image, when Lilico faces a room full of popping camera flashes, has the veneer of illustration. But like fashion itself, the movie is successful at delivering style and attitude but quickly moves on to the next new thing without imparting a message beyond the surface. It’s a fun, fast ride, but it’s just a ride. Then I get to the bottom and I see you again.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a feverish character study about fame, vanity, and the terrifying fragility of manufactured perfection… The visuals never settle into a comfortable place. Scenes are filled with exaggerated color palettes and surreal staging, making the environment feel beautiful and suffocating. It’s a world built entirely around image, and Ninagawa constantly reminds the audience how artificial that image really is.” – Chris Jones, Overly Honest Reviews

(This movie was nominated for review by Scott R. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

Helter Skelter

Helter Skelter

  • This lurid body horror, based on a manga by Kyoko Okazaki and directed by Mika Ninagawa (Sakuran), is a candy-colored nightmare!

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Capsules

CAPSULE: RETURN TO SILENT HILL (2026)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson

PLOT: A painter’s drunken dreams and a mysterious note lead him to the ghost town of Silent Hill, where he searches for his lost ex-lover amidst the eternally smoldering ruins.

Still from return to silent hill (2026)

COMMENTS: Aficionados will tell you that “Silent Hill 2” is one of the greatest video game stories ever told. I trust them, but this adaptation by Christophe Gans, returning to the Silent Hill series after a highly disappointing middle installment from another director, does nothing to support their claim. (Evidence of it faithfully recapturing the look of the game, on the other hand, is much stronger.) What we get here is a gilded but mediocre psychological horror that never explains why it needs to be set in the rapidly deteriorating “Silent Hill” universe—except for the fact that it’s a spooky locale.

And indeed, the film is at its best when it’s merely prowling about the town, encountering swarms of beetle-like insects, headless zombies squirting acid from a torso orifice, and spider-like corpses. It’s fun just sightseeing: the ashy gray streets and the eerie hallways of the town’s dilapidated tenements have a bleak beauty. But even Silent Hill’s essential hauntedness is starting to have diminishing returns. The series’ signature monster, Pyramid Head, is scary—terrifying, in fact—the first time you see him. Three movies in, he doesn’t have the same impact. Unlike in a game, this lumbering behemoth is never a threat to catch a protagonist.

Irvine and Anderson are competent leads whose main virtue is that they’re easy on the eyes. The supporting cast does not stand out, and it seems that most of their characters have been cut for time (Eddie serves no purpose in this plot, and could have been left out entirely). Akira Yamaoka’s evocative music again features. The star, such as it is, is the production design and visual effects.

The plot is the biggest issue. Yes, the movie will get weird, but only in that tired “the borders between reality and hallucination start to blur” approach that now seems to animate 5-10% of low and mid-budget horrors. The info drops explaining James and Mary’s generic love affair hardly create a strong emotional rooting interest, and the backstory of the mysterious cult isn’t developed enough to create a meaningful plot engine. In a nod to the video game’s multiple possible resolutions, the movie has conflicting, contradictory endings. The technique doesn’t work at all in the context of a movie adaptation, particularly for people who’ve never played the game. Don’t Return to Silent Hill in theaters. If you do, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Walkout note: the only other people in my theater, a couple, walked out with fifteen minutes left to go.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…between unnecessary lore changes and a lack of thematic heft in some of its storytelling, the filmmaker’s return to the franchise is a weird mix of exciting recreations, gorgeous visuals and disappointing execution.”–Grant Hermanns, Screen Rant (contemporaneous)