Tag (2015)

Sion Sono really seems to be out to claim the title of Japan's busiest film director. He kicked off 2015 by directing the made-for-television movie All Esper Dayo! SP, and followed that up with the theatrical releases Shinjuku Swan, Love & Peace, Tag, The Whispering Star and The Virgin Psychics. You didn't misread that: five feature films and a TV movie, all in one year.

So in the middle of that flurry of activity we have Tag, a genre blend of horror, thriller and fantasy. It begins with a schoolgirl named Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) on a bus to summer camp. Within about a minute and a half pretty much everybody around her is dead, and she's running for her life. The film lasts about 85 minutes and, excluding the closing credits, she's pretty much on the run the whole time. To explain the film any further would be to ruin half of the surprise.

The film is an adaptation of Yusuke Yamada's novel Real Onigokko, which has already been adapted into a series of feature films in recent years beginning with 2006's The Chasing World. Sono takes maybe half of the premise of Yamada's novel and uses it as a springboard for his own story. The result is something that echoes the original without actually resembling it very closely at all.

Fires on the Plain (2014)

In the final days of World War II, a bullied soldier suffering from tuberculosis makes his way through the Filipino jungle in the hope of reaching his evacuation point in time. On his journey he encounters local guerillas, hides from the American military, and discovers the frightening extent to which desperate, starving men will go in order to survive.

That's the premise of Ooka Shohei's 1951 novel Fires on the Plain, which formed the basis for Kon Ichikawa's 1959 film of the same name. While Ichikawa's film received a mixed response upon its original release it has since been re-evaluated as one of the best Japanese films ever made. It would be a foolhardy venture for any filmmaker to attempt adapting the novel again with such an acclaimed film with which to compete. Thankfully Shinya Tsukamoto was up to the challenge.

Tsukamoto is one of the shining lights of Japanese independent cinema. His films are all either self or privately funded. They usually have an experimental edge and a confronting rough-hewn quality to them. His debut feature Tetsuo: The Iron Man became an international cult hit - so much so that he's generally better known and appreciated outside of Japan than within it. Last year he finally achieved a life ambition: to adapt Shohei's novel, which he first read in high school, in an all-new film.