2021
A wealthy scion whose life is taken over by a mysterious doppelgänger, a lonely young wife who encounters a peeping tom, an alien monster crawling out of an ancient tomb, the gradually dissolving boundary between human and machine... Cult master Shinya Tsukamoto uses his wildest imagination as raw material, seasoned with body horror, to present a blood-soaked feast that leaves audiences squirming.
I remember the summer break of my sophomore year—because I took over organizing our department’s cinema festival, I decided to stay in the school dorm all summer, immersing myself in a personal, sensory journey of film appreciation. One afternoon in the campus library, I randomly picked up Tsai Ming-liang’s The River. To my surprise, it quietly and calmly depicted the atypical family experiences I had kept buried deep inside. That film stayed with me—a teenager full of anxiety about life, unsure whether I could truly take responsibility for myself—through those idle, languid summer days. Back then, there was no fiber-optic internet, no AI-powered smartphones. Just light and shadow, casting a humorous yet absurd gaze upon the hardships of reality. So here I am, recommending this film—let yourself sink into the dreamscape of its story, and let it echo the realism of our own lives.