SIGNAL 100 (シグナル 100) (2019)

Genre: Drama/ Horror/ Thriller
Director: Lisa Takeba
Cast: Kanna Hashimoto, Shido Nakamura, Yuta Koseki, Toshiki Seto, Shoma Kai, Masaki Nakao, Shodai Fukuyama
Runtime: 1 hr 28 mins
Rating: R21 (Violence and Gore)
Released By: GV
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 6 August 2020

Synopsis: WELCOME TO THE WORLD’S MOST LUNATIC GAME OF DEATH

YOU SURVIVE IF YOUR CLASSMATES DON’T

It’s another busy morning of seniors from Class C at the Seishin Academy excitedly preparing for their upcoming school festival. Their teacher, Mr. Shimobe (Shido Nakamura) gathers them all together in the audio-visual room where he suddenly shows his 36 students, including Reina Kashimura, a disturbingly creepy short film. Little do the students know that hidden in the film are hypnotic suggestions that compel them to suicide.

The trigger for the suicidal hypnotic suggestions number 100 in total, and include: “being late for class,” “using one’s phone”, and “crying.” Suddenly, everyday behavior morphs into triggers toward a violent self-inflicted death. Other fatal triggers include trying to leave the school ground or seeking help from others. The only means for breaking the spell comes from the death of classmates and learning how not to die. Then they are told that the only way to survive the spell is to be the last student standing.

As students take their own lives in horrifyingly grotesque and violent fashion, their sadistic teacher, Shimobe, takes his own life, falling from a classroom window. Under such desperate circumstances, human nature and survival instincts take over turning the students against each other in a chilling competition of survival only to be broken by the arrival of dawn. Kashimura struggles to find a way for everyone to survive with intrepid resolve. But can she break the hypnotic spell before every one of her classmates dies?. 

Movie Review:

Comparisons with ‘Battle Royale’ are inevitable, especially since ‘Signal 100’ also features a group of high-school students pitted against one another in a game of life-and-death. That said, those looking for this latest gory thriller to have the same visceral impact will probably be disappointed, for director Lisa Takeba falls short of delivering the same emotional gut punch with its characters or kills.

The premise is simple to the point of being simplistic: fed up with having his classroom rules ignored by the students of Class C at Seishin Academy, their teacher Mr. Shimobe (Shido Nakamura) shows them a short film that hypnotises an individual to commit suicide if and when he or she engages in a certain behaviour. There are 100 of these behaviours, which the class of 36 will have to discover on their own in order to stay alive.

Among the triggers are “trying to leave the school compound”, “seeking help from others” and “crying”, which are responsible for some of the earlier deaths. The discovery of a book in the school library which explains the origins of the short film reveals at least half of the 100 triggers, but the rest have been devised by none other than Mr. Shimobe himself, leaving those left standing racing to uncover the rest of the deadly triggers.

As with ‘Battle Royale’, writer Yusuke Watanabe zeroes in on a number of decent characters to sympathise with, as well as a number of abhorrent ones to detest. Chief among the former is Reina (Kanna Hashimoto), a gentle, kind-hearted budding law student who pleads with the rest of her classmates to work together to break the spell. Joining her is baseball player Yotaro (Keisuke Higashi), who used to be childhood pals with the principal villain of the story.

That honour belongs to Shinichiro (Riku Ichikawa), a selfish loner who desperately wants to be the last student standing. Not only is he willing to connive and cheat, Shinichiro goes to the extent of exploiting the feelings of a fellow female classmate in order to whittle the competition. You’ll loathe him all right, even with a late backstory of his childhood that tries to fill in just how he became that way.

But even so, there is not nearly enough plotting to make us root for Reina. Despite clocking in at slightly under one and a half hours, the story is not only paper-thin but haphazardly drawn, lurching from scene to scene without much continuity. Indeed, its preoccupation seems to be to register a bloody suicide of any one of the forgettable characters every few minutes, and as well-executed as these are, they are only as good as sadistic relief without the benefit of well-sketched character arcs.

By failing to get its audience invested in the fate of its characters, ‘Signal 100’ ultimately fails to be anything compelling. Other than depicting high-school students taking their lives in creatively grotesque fashion – whether stabbing oneself in the stomach with a broken beaker in the school laboratory or putting a live bulb into one’s mouth – there is hardly any thrill to be found in this pointless display of violence. As much as its title claims to be cranked to 100, you'll won't find it difficult to ignore such a feeble signal. 

Movie Rating:

(Not nearly quite cranked to 100, this gory 'Battle Royale' wannabe falls short of delivering any visceral gut punch)

Review by Gabriel Chong