No One Lives

At first I did not even want to see this movie. The story just didn´t sound appealing and I was expecting a typical slasher and to be left in disappointment afterwards. But then a small detail changed my mind about not going to the cinema - it is the new movie directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. With Versus and Azumi being two of my favourite movies I had to see this I guess.

This movie has an interesting approach. It basically never really surprises you. You can always sense the oddness among the characters and you will suspect their next moves or the next story "twist" in pretty much every scene. For me this was a kind of nice experience, because you are not left with any "holy shit!" or "wtf!" moments compared to movies like high tension, which try to be very innovative in their genre.

Despite the lack of innovation this movie has done nearly everything correctly. It has some minor flaws with the story/background information, and I personally do not like the 16mm style. As a non technical guy I cannot even tell if it was shot this way or in HD and then just made a little "rougher" on purpose. We know how much Kitamura likes to play with filters, etc. Comparing it to the Kitamura movies named before, I could not really spot any scenes that seemed to have his handwriting or generally the Asian style, with those crazy camera angles and shots. I would not have been able to tell you afterwards that this was a "Kitamura" which is not necessarily bad though.

The rest of the movie was a real homogenic experience with mostly good actors, a nice score and pretty nice gore scenes for the graphic lovers here. I would totally recommend to see the movie and think it will be difficult to be totally disappointed by this. I´ll give it a solid 8/10.