🎬 Movie Review: 12 Suicidal Teens (十二人の死にたい子どもたち)

Thanks to an online group, 12 teenagers meet in an abandoned hospital to, as the title goes, end their own lives.
Once they are all gathered in the basement's room, Satoshi, the creator of the online group and the first to arrive, explains the one mandatory rule: they'll proceed only when the entire group is unanimous...even if only one member has second thoughts, they will discuss until they're all in.
Pretty easy, if it wasn't for one anomalous detail: there's a 13th boy is already in the room and he's already dead!

Kenichi is the first to raise his hands, saying he wants to know what happened to the dead boy (it doesn't look like a suicide) and how he got into the basement room, which was supposedly locked.
Shinjiro, who's the son of two police officers, immediately starts to investigate, splitting the groups in triples and giving them to check different areas of the hospital.
Two girls, Anri and Meiko, strongly oppose to the investigations as they're longing for death, for different reasons.

As the mystery around the death of the 13th member of the group starts to unfold, boys and girls share the reasons why behind their painful decision...
Eventually, the truth will be revealed, so the group is left with one big and important question to answer: 

keeping up with the original plan or giving life another chance?

My Opinion👍👎

The common thread between this movie and the books I’ve read recently is death…I really need to change topic!

So, these 12 teenagers made up their minds and they're ready to take their own lives. Various, and not so trivial, are the reasons: guilt, pain (both physical and psychological), revenge, sense of hopelessness, and a general “f*** you” to everything…

At first, I thought all of them took the decision very lightly, but as we get to know their backgrounds and current situations better, they don't look that careless.

I had a weird feeling toward Satoshi: he’s the quietest among the entire group and way too composed for a boy who’s about to die.

Anri’s character in powerful and engaging, being her too young to bear such a heavyweight in her heart and the only one who’s 100% convinced about suicide. 

I liked that, to add even more gloominess to a topic that's already grim, interior and external scenes were very dark as well, with a storm breaking in the middle of the story. I also like the unpredictability and all the plot twists that keep on coming throughout the film.

Rating: 4/5

Ph: asianwiki.com