Exploring the darker edges of eeriness, sexuality, and bizarre, horror-esque art with unconventional layers of psychological deviance, Rampo Noir is challenging as it is horrifically disturbing, presenting the writer's fiction in radical ways, hoping to push boundaries but never quite succeeding. Partly due to the violent, sadomasochistic sex scenes that often crop up, but also because it's not always immediately clear what the filmmakers are trying to say, thanks to their ponderously slow approach. There's only so much time you can spend on artistically rotting corpses and auditory excess before you're going to annoy someone, but the film remains consistently refreshingly and cinematically striking with an unabashed eroticism and willingness to plunge into the dark realms of Rampo's work. Each director breathes life into their own respective take on the material, all have a unique visual style, which help draw you into their strange worlds, be it exploitation or arthouse; each segment carves its own identity, although, admittedly, some more to my taste than others, with the high points being the two segments that bookend the feature and, ironically, come from the two newcomers. Suguru Takeuchi delivers a full-on avant-garde experimental and introspective short, full of evocative imagery in what is a beautifully surreal and breathtakingly stunning, if bitterly short, dive into existential dread. Atsushi Kaneko, meanwhile, more well-known for his status as a mangaka, makes an impressive directorial debut with the finale, blending his usual sensibilities with a lush cinematic intensity and plenty of darkly comedic moments. That being said, the other two segments are far from a slouch. Adapting his third Rampo tale, Akio Jissoji's usual keen eye for composition and signature stylistic flourishes turn his short into a mesmerising fever dream. Hisayasu Satō, meanwhile, delivers a grimly gruesome tale, taking Rampo's work to its most grotesque extreme, containing mutilation and plenty of bodily fluids. It's presented with an unusual use of light and colour, as unsettling as it is provocative, a visceral commentary on physical and emotional dependency. Despite the mismatched feel of the whole affair, Rampo Noir's hallucinogenic approach to narrative and visuals is nothing short of invigorating.
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