Film review: Red Room 2 | easternkicks.com (2024)

A second helping of unpleasantness as four contestants bet their lives in a sad*stic card game…

Japanese writer-director Daisuke Yamanouchi returns for a second round of King’s Game with Red Room 2, again pitting four contestants against each other as they risk it all for money. Although sad*stic and gruesome, the first instalment was a surprisingly tense and efficient affair, and immediately marked Daisuke as a name to watch in the Japanese splatter world, his reputation further cemented by the three other V-cinema films he shot in 1999, most notably the notorious Girl Hell 1999. As with most sequels, with Red Room 2 he sticks to what made the original great, while upping the stakes, or at least taking things in a bizarre and unexpected direction, and the result is a classic of the genre – at least for those with somewhat warped sensibilities.

The film kicks off very much in the manner of its predecessor, with four strangers being locked in a room for a round of King’s Game. The rules are simple – each contestant takes a card, and whoever picks the king card is allowed to do whatever they want to or with the others, with there being a handy box of household items and power tools in a cage in the corner of the room. After one contestant is disqualified for technical reasons, a newcomer joins, a steely young woman who has apparently won the game several times previously. To make up for this, the prize money is doubled to 20 million yen, and the fun begins in earnest.

Although Red Room 2 has an almost identical premise to the first film, it’s actually quite different in a number of ways. Whereas the original was almost entirely focused on events in the room, the sequel features more in the way of character detail via a series of flashbacks, woven into the narrative between the rounds of the game. This actually works pretty well, Daisuke Yamanouchi using these scenes, not in a futile attempt to make gorehounds care about the contestants, but to provide a little context as to why they are there, and to mine their psyches for nihilistic commentary on the human condition. This ensures that the film is more engaging than its predecessor and, in a truly bizarre and unexpected manner, it even comes with an oddly sweet love story and emotional punch. Without wishing to spoil anything, a twist during the later stages is perhaps one of the craziest in Japanese splatter cinema (no mean feat), catapulting the film into surreal science fiction, and this in itself is more than worth the price of admission.

This sentimental streak doesn’t detract from the sadism of course, and Red Room 2 is if anything even nastier than the original, and even more perverse – this is made abundantly clear by the opening scene which, without any context, features a man masturbating over a woman sucking on a lightbulb. Things only get more extreme from there, with scenes of puke eating, rape, mutilation and worse, not to mention one of the most grotesque uses of a toothbrush ever to grace the screen, all coupled with humiliation and psychological torture. Though there is a great deal of sexual violence against the female characters, this time around the male characters are subjected to their fair share as well, not that this will make the film any more palatable for most.

Again shot on video, the film’s production values could politely be described as basic, though this works well enough, and fits with the reality show premise. Daisuke shows a bit more ambition this time, also working in some CCTV camera shots to add a little variety, as well as the flashback scenes outside the room. The special effects range from the daft to the nauseating, though provide the film with a number of standout moments of stomach-churning horror.

At the same time though, the sheer weirdness of the twist and the mad incongruity of the love story mean that Red Room 2 somehow never feels too grim, and Daisuke Yamanouchi wins extra points for gonzo verve, and for throwing any sense of logic out the window. While this might alienate or baffle those looking for more straightforward splatter, the film has more WTF moments than almost any other of its kind, and this, coupled with some real tension and suspense, make it a must-see for fans of the far-out.

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