Heracin

This movie, as its title indicates, is centred around 12 suicidal teens as they are planning to end their life together. They don't know each other, they all have various motivations and they are grouped together to solve a mystery as in the room they met they uncover an already dead boy. I wish the scenario digged even more into the characters personnality as well as the bond they formed together. I think they should have maybe reduced a bit the number of characters to deep dive into their psyche, their motivations as well as their evolution.

There is a quite a few familiar faces for me in the cast : Hagiwara Riku, Mackenyu, Kitamura Takumi and Takasugi Mahiro. I was happy to see them, especially Hagiwara Riku and Mackenyu, that I really love. The ensemble cast did a solid job overall. Not all the roles were as interesting but I liked the variety in characters.

Production was not outstanding but efficient in highlighting the main points of the locked-room mystery. Overall, the editing could have been better to make it more intense. It also lacked in terms of pace as well as thrills factor. The soundtrack was very forgettable and there was a dull aspect to the picture which might be expected given the thematic but did not help in making the story more interesting.

If you are looking for an investigation movie, with some psychological aspects and featuring a locked-room mystery involving 12 suicidal teens, you might want to give it a shot. I honestly found it relatively predictable in its ending, but at least the resolution of the mystery made sense. The morale behind the story felt a bit too light given the heavy topics at stake. I feel that an epilogue, combined with a reduced number of characters might have made the outcome of the story more fullfilling.