And the lights. My god, the lights.
You will either turn it off in 20 minutes, or you will emerge from the other side a fundamentally different person. There is no middle ground. The plot is deceptively simple: Oscar, a small-time American drug dealer living in the chaotic, pulsating heart of Tokyo, is shot dead by police during a botched sting operation. enter the void -2009-
Tokyo is rendered as a cyberpunk womb. Every surface bleeds red, blue, and green. The title sequence alone—a strobe-lit, abstract explosion of the alphabet—comes with a literal warning for epileptics. This is a movie that hates the dark. It is garish, loud, and aggressively ugly in the way that a car crash is ugly. But it is also achingly beautiful. And the lights
But that is precisely why it is a masterpiece. There is no middle ground
Just remember to breathe. Have you survived the Tokyo trip? Or did you turn it off during the title sequence? Let me know in the comments—if you’ve recovered enough to type.