Hooptober 12 1/31

There’s something so pleasant about the yellow subtitles on old J-Horror films. So I actually liked this one even if it goes about as far away from Junji Ito’s The Boy at the Crossroads as you can.  I will say this though the hairstyling and makeup of Ryûhei Matsuda is probably the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a real life Junji Ito drawing particularly when he’s just staring to the side.

We focus on the romantic outlets of the school children and the suicides that happen as a result of meeting the Beautiful Boy but we really change why that happens from the book. Midori being the girl returning home instead of Ryuske was a big switch up. Felt a little disjointed at times as when we delve into the why it is happening it feels covert far removed from the rest of the story and the twist kind of comes out of nowhere. Not to say it was bad and Ito also through in some disjointed twists in the book itself so I can’t completely fault the movie for that. The story that we do get was interesting and glad to finally get around to watching it. I still think Ito’s movies work better as live action adaptations.