Character

Yamashiro, a comic artist who has never broken through, happens to see the perpetrator of a family massacre with his face uncovered. He does not describe him to the police. Instead he uses the man as the killer in his own comic, and the series takes off. Then the real killer starts committing the murders as drawn. Akira Nagai directed. Masaki Suda plays Yamashiro, Fukushi Sota the killer. The idea is complicity: the artist becomes famous by withholding what he knows, and every new success arrives with a new body. The second half moves to the relationship between the killer and the artist; the man starts seeing the person who depicts him as his creator. The comic pages enter the film directly, sitting beside the real events in the same edit. It did well at the Japanese box office. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese thrillers and films about the relation between creativity and crime. Who it is not for: anyone wanting realistic procedure; the plot leans constantly on coincidence.