Newspaper headlines are howling about a rash of suicides. 54 college students have thrown themselves under subway cars, and more bodies are piling up. The situation defies explanation. Something is afoot in the shadows, but what? After each suicide, a roll of hundreds of tiny rectangles of human skin, each of exactly the same size, is found. There is also a mysterious Web site with points representing each of the suicides, never to mention the rumours of a certain Suicide Club, a chaotic movement out to destabilize the natural order of things.

The investigation is entrusted to two police officers. To them, the key to this enigma lies with the youth. As they ask themselves how, why and most importantly when and where these suicides will take place next, the phone rings and an angelic young voice, strangely knowledgeable for its age, thickens the intrigue. At the same time, a hot new hit pop tune is released by the country's latest sensation Dessert, a syrupy pair of 10-year-old girls. It seems there may be some connection there?

Engagingly cryptic, Suicide Circle will sink its hooks into many a film fan, while putting all the recent, substandard Ring clones from Asia and elsewhere in their place. It positions itself exactly between the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Kairo), for his complex existentialist reflections, and those of Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q) for his deranged excesses of rebellious provocation. Recognizing that this movie matches the talents of those two is one thing. How far the film's unflinching cynicism goes above and beyond either of those filmmakers? works is something that has to be seen to be believed.

It's equally a biting black comedy, an excessively graphic horror film, a musical (check out the incredible scene with the goth-punk band singing about dying like Joan of Arc in a Robert Bresson film), a thriller in the style of Hypnosis and a deeply moving work along the lines of Virgin Suicides (the director is also a published poet). It deals with the growing problem of suicide in Japan, a frequent subject for filmmakers from that country. What's surprising is how it bypasses the socio-economic angle and dives into a more intimate, philosophical approach. It asks questions about human connections, inexplicable violence, suicide as a nihilistic revolutionary act and the spiritual gap between generations that it knows it cannot answer. Unmissable, right from the opening scene of glorious carnage and joyous collective suicide?