Tag (2015)
All high school girls out there: You are a little too obnoxious so we decided to reduce your numbers.
So I’m out of town the day of this getting posted - going up north(er) for a convention, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to hold to my one movie a week minimum schedule that I’ve upheld for over 14 years now (*Author’s note: auto-post failed me, and this did not go up on 7/18 as planned). I know not everyone gets why I’d go through the extra effort - I mean, I don’t really earn anything out of it - but at the same time, that just makes it more fitting for this weeks chosen movie. See, I saw this thing a long time ago, and it holds the title of being the only movie that took me longer to explain what happened in the first ten minutes of the movie than it would if you just watched it - and both methods would probably just leave you totally confused. Ha, yeah, a this should be a interesting one - a little something special to make up for the pre-written report yeah? Don’t get it confused by that more modern movie about he popular kids game or you are in for a real shocking time, tonight we watch Tag.
After watching this movie for the second time, I can successfully say that I’m still about as stuck on it as I was the first time around - except this time I don’t have as much whiplash. For a two hour movie, this thing feels like at least five different things all combined by one out-there thread. I feel like talking about any of it could simultaneously be a spoiler and not - as I’m sure most of it is going to sound like gibberish if I thread it along like I normally do. Still, let’s just throw it out there now that we can just say if you want the ideal experience just skip this and watch, then come back and see you aren’t the only one scratching their head yeah? Our fist bit is a girl whose got the unfortunate luck of having a bad wind day to the extreme. This suddenly shifts into some slightly more heartwarming bonding at a school, until that turns into the worst school day to exist - and that’s saying something when it’s coming from an American. We then shift to a very metaphorical wedding - and it’s at this point we start to realize some things about the movie that just hadn’t really crossed our attentions yet, including the start of the main gist of the movie. Swap that into a marathon sprint to the world-breaking finale, and then you can take some deep breaths and try to figure out what just happened.
Our actors (used in the gender-less sense here so I can avoid having to figure out the proper use of plural actress) do a wonderful job. There’s a bit of a barrier to some degree - what with it being another movie that subtitled so I can understand all the Japanese lines. Beyond that, there could be any number of cultural things that fly over my head - but I feel like they do a great job based on how it sounds and how they emote their stuff. That kind of thing is pretty universal, and given the craziness of some of the things like killer wind, I’d argue it helps to try and ground things a little bit. That said, it’s hard to tell if some of the over or under acting spots were intentional (to which I’d assume they were) so that might off-put some folks there. It can be a bit… much when there are just a claustrophobic amount of loud folks on the screen sending it to 11 with some fiery zest, but it fits the scenes and energy regardless. It’s also a bit interesting since the Quantum Leap style body switching of the main character provides plenty of different people doing a relatively good job at playing a character whose different but not at the same time.
The characters are alright? I mean, I’ll be real it’s still a bit rough to decide on some of them here - depth isn’t exactly crazy for most of them, given the sheer number of side characters. The main focus is on the main as they keep shifting through these different identities as the movie goes along. There’s a mystery there as to whats going on with her, and a few of her friends end up having a similar reoccurring set - her best friend (or love interest if subtitles are calling it right, or both depending on the segment) gets the biggest bump from all of her time in. It’s still not as though that particular character experiences growth per say - that’s pretty much entirely reserved for the main - but of all the walls of humans floating about in this movie, that one feels like the most living and singular in the sea of flesh.
The initial nemesis of the movie.
Costumes are solid - it’s pretty much all just school girl outfits and modern attire. You really don’t think about costumes at all until you hit the wedding segment and there’s a dude with a literal pig-head on to rock home what I think is some metaphors or commentary. Sets are equally handled - they fit what they are, and provide enough variety that things don’t end up looking too samey unless intended to. I particularly enjoy the exterior of the first leg of the movie, where we have snow on one side and normal fall/spring type grass on the other side of the road. Yes, it’s not really a big deal - but with all the lunacy that’s goign to follow that opening segment, i like the dichotomy of the two sides of the road feeling almost poetic or something to help try and job the brain into not being turned off. That said, maybe turned off would be easier for some folks for this one. Effects work is a mixed bag. It’s mostly fine or good enough, but there’s some that can be pretty corny or obvious. Maybe it’s more of a most situation in terms of the violence. Look, did I mention this thing is violent? When looking up the tagline, I realized that this was also intended to be a bit of a splatter film - which makes perfect sense because it is - so there are plenty of violent scenes. How about two whole busloads of school girls getting blown in half by the wind? They even have silly little blood spurts coming out the bottom-half of the bodies that remain on the bus. Yes, those shouldn’t be pumping anything when the heart is now outside the bus, but we don’t much care about that do we? I mean, seriously, the wind just blew dozens of people and a bus in half like it drove through some thin steel cables Final Destination-style. Actually, now that I say that out loud, the entire movie does feel a bit Final Destination, if death was just really bad at getting the one person it meant to keep getting.
Anyways, effects are a mixed bag but given the craziness it never feels out of place or particularly bad. Well, I guess everything seems a bit surreal and out of place or nowhere, but that’s beyond the point. Audio is balanced pretty well, and audio helps give a lot of stuff mood. There can be long segments where no real dialogue is happening, and it’s at those times the music comes in to help try and set a mood. Sometimes it’s a bit whimsical, sometimes it’s a bit horror. The opening theme is all of these things at once, which is pretty fitting for setting you up to expect - a little bit of happy and a whole lot of “oh now what the heck is going on” tension or spook. That said, it’s not really scary in the typical horror movie sense - I mean, sure the opening has wind that kills chasing someone, and later we have a tux-wearing person in a pig head chasing people down, but even then it ends up having this random scene of the person doing some flips and cartwheel stuff - so again, that opening whimsy and horror is great at setting the mood for the rest of the movie. Lines sound like they are delivered well, but again - I don’t speak Japanese so I really can’t attest to it.
Now comes the part that’s probably better left to someone smarter than me. The first time I watched this movie, every time I thought I figured out where it was trying to be it would suddenly shift gears. Having the benefit of seeing the end of it, the story (at least at the surface level) makes much more sense. Oh, they used DNA to make a game so it’s just that character shifting through the multi-verse levels of the game and suddenly being aware of it. Alright, sure, it makes sense in a scifi movie way we’ll say. I’m pretty solid that there’s commentary on the relationship between men and women in here - probably the most obvious because of the getting married to a dude that’s a pig, in part literally. There’s also some kinda gross dude motivations at the end when it (kind of) starts spelling stuff out for you. Past that though, I feel like maybe there’s something in there about being different, the power of love, and / or maybe something on being gay? It’s a bit hard for me to really dig in, since I’m just not that highly intellectual type person that’s more suited for it, but also because about the time my brain starts to grab at something it might be throwing down - like the chains of fate and evasive powers of randomness - the movie flips the violence switch and teachers start pulling out miniguns and grenade launchers. It’s like how i can’t tell if some of the camera angles are full out supposed to just be male gaze lecherous panty shots, or if it’s because that angle just happens to make things feel far more like something bad is about to happen. Maybe it’s just both?
Girls just want to have fun.
The first time I watched this movie it took me back to when I tuned into the anime classic Akira halfway through and immediately just went “what the heck is going on here?” A second watch still leaves plenty of questions, and I still don’t know if I can fully explain to someone what I watched in less time than if they were to just watch it themselves, but if you want a movie that’s going to take you on a trip with plenty of outrageous splatter moments and a whole lot of ladies (seriously, the movie doesn’t have a single guy in it until almost the end, and you’ll be forgiven for not noticing right away as you try to process what you are watching), then this might be your one-stop shop. It’s not a bad movie, although I might call it a hard movie since I don’t really think the casual person is gonna throw this on and come out thinking it was the best movie of their life - but it does have a bunch going on to it that I think there’s probably a group of folks out there that can resonate with. That or a group of friends yammering back and forth over what the heck is going and trying to follow along. Or both! Not for everyone, this version of tag, but interesting enough if you can find it on, say, YouTube or the likes and have a few hours to blow after enjoying the trailer.