ada
the leading man is my tpye
Gutsycurene
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Fleur
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
asian-cineblog
The Neighbour No. 13 explores the consequences of humiliation, abuse and torture among young teenagers and children. Juzo Murasaki arrives at a work construction area to take on his new job. Unfortunately for him, his supervisor turns out to be Akai, the one that has previously tortured him when both of them were only young teenagers. After years of repressed memories, Juzo develops a psychopathic alter ego that finally decides to seek revenge against Akai and his family, in a surrealistic journey that dissects the fears and enraged violence inside the human mind.Review The film is served in an exceptionally slow pace allowing the viewer to be submerged in the intriguing atmosphere in which a considerable number of disturbing scenes simply tend to pile up, notwithstanding no further clue of the upcoming events being expected. The violence in The Neighbour No. 13 is thoroughly presented throughout the movie, alternating with traces of humorous moments and apparently childish scenes. The scenes appear to be fairly well-orchestrated by the director, being presented in a particularly raw and cruel way, thus enhancing a feeling of repulsion since the type of violence and to whom it is addressed is indeed the most disturbing side of the violent behavior in this case.As the number of flashbacks tends to increase, Juzo is apparently sent into a downward spiral, leaving him desperate to gain control of his own mind. Surrealistic unorganized events, sometimes-incomprehensible perspective and grotesque animated scenes contribute to perfectly illustrate Juzo's disconnection from the reality. Nonetheless, towards the end of the movie however, the last scenes will eventually tie up any loose ends and a possible feeling of confusion that has been build up throughout the film.The physical characterization of Juzo and his revenge driven created alter ego is also of particular interest as Juzo appears as a delicate young man and No. 13 is better described as a disturbing disfigured emotionless creature. The scenes representing Juzo's mind were particularly well shot and quite bizarre in an interesting way. The remaining characters were for the most part attention-grabbers, even though rudeness and bullying can easily borderline annoyance, which was fortunately not the case in the movie. There is no particular character development for the most part excepting Juzo himself as the film represents his own journey, facing his own fears and demons and finding the necessary empowerment.Bottom line, The Neighbour No. 13 may be described as a dark character study wrapped in surrealistic contours of a vengeance quest, that as clearly something to say about standing up for yourself and fighting back against anybody or anything, allowing the viewer to explore the consequences and costs when repressed hatred and revenge become a part of anyone's reality.Asian-cineblog.blogspot.com
Jessica Carvalho
The story begins showing Jûzô Murasaki,a boy who is frequently being bullied and abused by a gang from his school, whose leader is Tôru Akai, the school's little demon.(And the things they do with Jûzo are not light stuff, they are from eating bugs to having acid poured down his mouth.) Never being able to defend himself, Jûzo grows traumatized, and ends up working, as an adult, in the same place that Tôru works. Tôru still has the same bad behavior he had as a kid,torturing other workers that are underneath his rank, but he doesn't remember that Jûzo studied with him when they were younger. Living the same hell as an adult that he had in his childhood, the anger inside Jûzo grows to a point that he gets another self, a violent and angry personality that is very different from his ordinary behavior. And this personality very soon becomes a part of Jûzo's, who wants his vengeance for all the years being bullied. And the good thing is that he is Tôru's neighbor...'Rinjin 13-gô' is a very different movie about vengeance, specially because most of the things shown in this movie actually never happened, they could have happened if Jûzô never faced his enemy Tôru Akai. In this way, the story is very original, since most of the movies when have the vengeance plot, actually show what the characters did to their enemies, and never what could have happened if they had faced the person before. The director of this movie started in the film industry very well, and I hope we can see more great movies from Yasuo Inoue.Ps: Anyone here is surprised like I am, to see Jûzo's wife let a strange neighbor that she doesn't know well to stay with her son?
HumanoidOfFlesh
First-time director Yasuo Inoue tells the story of a troubled young psychopath named Juzo Murasaki,who was tormented through school by group of his classmates,led by Toru Akai.This leads to the young boy to create a split personality,where his other half is on the psychotic side and apparently only comes out when he feels bullied or angry."The Neighbor No.Thirteen" is slow and deliberate horror film laced with heavy psychological tones.It's obviously influenced by "All Night Long" series and Takashi Miike's works.The film offers a few moments of brutal and highly disturbing violence,so fans of Japanese transgressive cinema should be pleased.The finale is quite disappointing,though.My rating:9 out of 10.
EVOL666
First off, this isn't your average "uber-weird" J-horror film. The story is pretty straight-forward which is refreshing for a change. There's no ghosts, or girls with long black hair, or rings, or phones, or any of that - just a good, tension-filled revenge tale. That said, my major gripe with the film is the ending, as it was too vague for my taste, and really dropped it a notch in my book. I'll be brief with my "summary", as to say too much would spoil the film...Juzo is a shy and reserved guy who was picked on and bullied horribly in school as a child, and has developed a split personality as a result. When the guy that was the "main" bully happens to move in upstairs to Juzo, it's time for the bully to meet Juzo's "dark side"...To say any more would really give too much of the well thought out plot away, so that's all you get, but that's really all you need to know going into this one. It's a relatively straight revenge-film with some very notable performances by all involved. It's not overly graphically gory or violent (comparitively speaking...) but there are some scenes that may upset more mainstream viewers - especially towards the end. Speaking of the end of the film - this is my major problem with NEIGHBOR 13 as there really is no resolution, which highly disappointed me. If the ending would have been handled better, this film would have easily gotten a 9 or 9.5 from me. Either way, it's definitely worth a look. Recommended - 8.5/10