Release Date: April 19, 2014 Length: 70 minutes Director: Jindo Masaaki
Also goes by the name of Shi no Jikkyou Chuukei
Main Cast:
Ami Nojou as Ayumi.... Our heroine, sophomore at a university who recently joined their film club. Is still best friends with Yoriko but has met others which is sending her friend into a silent rage and Ayumi was chosen as the club's lead actress in their next production.
The rest....
Saki Funaoka as Risa.... Ayumi's new friend at her school's film club
Misato Kawauchi as Yoriko.... Ayumi's best friend while they were growing up and protected her from being bullied which led her own life on a downward spiral
Shohei Nanbe as Tachibaba.... Leader of the film club, had gone to high school with Ayumi but hadn't known her
Yusuke Arai as Machida.... The film club's main writer
....plus a few others whose roles weren't that large nor important.
Another Nogi 'horror flick' and have to say I enjoyed this one quite a bit. This was much better than the above movie and there was a second storyline which also would have made for a decent film. This movie stars Ami who was one of my Nogi faves for a long time. To me she was their funniest member ever and since she left the group at the end of 2018 their variety shows haven't been worth watching. This was another extremely low budget film and was directed by the same person who did "Death Blog". Both endings weren't as good as they good have been so perhaps that director needs to work at that but still did enjoy this film, let's get right to the review.
Those top two screenshots really didn't take place, it was a reenactment of what may have happened in the movie the film club is planning on doing. The university's name was never revealed but their film club has a new member who is Ayumi(Ami) who is in the bottom screenshot. As Ayumi says she's not good with horror but has agreed to take the lead role in the movie or at least for now as she had no other technical abilities. The two leaders of the club are in the screenshot second from the bottom, on the left is Machida who is the main writer and seems to know everything about films. On the right is Tachibaba who will be the director and he went to the same high school as Ayumi though the pair never knew each other.
At that little pow-wow something even more important happened to Ayumi as she's made a new friend named Risa. It was actually Risa who was pushing to become Ayumi's friend and she'll be playing a huge role in the film or at least had much screen time. Before the pair could really connect Ayumi had received a call from her best friend and had to leave the party to see her. That girl's name is Yoriko and the two have been friends for quite a long time. Ayumi is so indebted to her as back in high school Ayumi had been bullied by a large group of girls though not physically. Yoriko had stepped in to save her friend but at a cost as soon she was the one being bullied.
Kind of skipping around time wise as it wasn't revealed for a while but those actions of Yoriko saving her friend really affected her life. While Ayumi has been doing well at her college the same can't be said for Yoriko who had failed her two attempts at the school's entrance exams. The main reason was because of the bullying as it affected her studying and don't think Ayumi felt guilty about it until the very end. Since that bullying began on Yoriko she became a wrist cutter to Ayumi's dismay, she hates what her best friend is doing but never told her to stop it. Yoriko seemed like a decent girl of about twenty but is really not doing well in her head. She's been clinging to Ayumi since they finished high school and that clinging is getting much worse.
Throughout the movie Yoriko constantly called Ayumi to see when she was coming home, they didn't live together but Yoriko just had to be by her side whenever possible. So while Ayumi is doing well at school and has made many new friends at the film club the actual movie she'll be starring in isn't going as well. That's because Ayumi has such a hard time with horror and the other club members couldn't understand why. But eventually Ayumi became comfortable with her new friends as she opened up to Risa and Tachibaba what her problem was. So she told the pair the entire story of her being bullied back in high school and how Yoriko had saved her life but in turn destroyed her own. Ayumi just felt so uncomfortable about doing a horror film after what's taken place in her life and her friends understood.
Even the main writer Machida understood and was willing to write a different story though what the new theme would be was undecided. During this time Ayumi had been becoming much closer to Risa and the pair would often talk about life and go out for walks. This new friend of Ayumi's made Yoriko insanely jealous as she began to spy on her friend as wasn't spending as much time with Yoriko. And that time was going to become even less as besides Risa Ayumi had also become very close to Tachibana, though they went to high school together he never realized she had been bullied. Risa had scheduled a day for her and Ayumi to take in a new film but it was all a set up. That's because Risa bailed out saying she had the flu and in her place sent Tachibana to Ayumi's horror!
Ayumi had never been on a date before and was trembling at the fact of spending a day with a male. But silently she did like Tachibana quite a bit so they did spend the day together and Ayumi had one of best days of her life. It was just that one date but the pair became much closer but now he's another obstacle in the way for Yoriko. Of course unknown to Ayumi was the fact that Yoriko had been spying on the pair during their date, when Ayumi went home that night she realized her phone had been off and Yoriko had sent her about a hundred messages.
This film's title "Death Streamed Life" was also going to be the title of the film club's movie. We didn't hear much about the story but it was going to consist of a woman in red following a person to their home, once there the woman in red would kill that person while it was streamed live. After that date with Tachibana Ayumi had returned home, while looking at her laptop she was horrified to see that same woman in red on her screen! Then the scene shifted to that woman being right behind Ayumi, how in the world could someone be filming this she wondered in terror? No clue as this was one thing that was never fleshed out as much as it should have been.\
While that woman on Ayumi's laptop may have been fake there really was a woman dressed in red hiding in Ayumi's apartment. Ayumi realized it quickly enough and grabbed a knife to thwart the attack. That woman in red pounced on Ayumi and the pair struggled for a while but Ayumi came out on top but who was this mysterious woman? Of course it was none other than Ayumi's best friend Yoriko whose jealousy of Ayumi getting new friends drove her to such an act but would she really want to kill her only friend? Yoriko spilled her guts out to Ayumi who hadn't realized how much she meant to her friend nor how much she had been suffering. While the two were making up of all things to appear in the apartment was another woman in red, where did she come from?!
Final segment, this was just a seventy minute film which is about the length of a 1 1/2 drama episode. Ayumi and Yoriko fought this new woman in red and it was really no contest as they were able to lock the woman in a room though not before Ayumi had been stabbed but it wasn't life threatening. She quickly called Tachibana to come and rescue them, he somehow appeared in less than a minute. Slowly Tachibana entered the room but to his puzzlement there was no one there, were they playing a joke on him he wondered? As he turned to ask the girls that popping out of nowhere was that mysterious woman in red who proceeded to stab Tachibana to his death. Arriving on the scene just as he was dying was Risa who obviously was clueless on what was going on along with a few viewers(?).
Of course the trio of females became panicked and fled the apartment. They ran seemingly for miles and yet somehow that woman was right on their trail The threesome eventually made it to a rooftop where they presumed they'd be safe but in a horror flick there's no such thing as 'safe'. Shortly after arriving on the rooftop the woman appeared, before you knew it Risa had been stabbed to death and now the two best friends were in line to join her. Though Yoriko may have wanted to hurt her friend there was really no way she would allow anything to happen to Ayumi and she ended up being the person to battle this woman in red, wonder if I should have referred to her as a creature?
Yoriko came out on top but not before getting severely injured, the woman had been pushed off the roof to her death but did she really die? That's unknown to us but we do know that the stab wounds to Yoriko were too much to overcome as she died in Ayumi's arms who at that moment finally realized how much her friend had done for her but it was a case of too little too late. As the film came to it's final seconds the scene shifted back to Ayumi's empty apartment. There we saw her laptop screen which somehow had the rooftop scene live on it's screen, with the death of the woman in red was the curse really gone?
Not too much horror until the final fifteen minutes but still did enjoy this film quite a bit. It could have made for a few different kinds of movies, perhaps just a horror one or one just focusing on the the film club or perhaps even the deranged character of Yoriko. Even if you're not a Nogi fan would recommend this movie and thought Ami did a fine job in it. She does a lot of stage plays these days but would like to see her more in dramas or films. Will give this a grade of 8.2/10, much higher than the film above this one. There's one other Nogi horror film that came out in 2014, do have it but unsure if I'll review it but odds are it'll happen. Will give this a grade of 8.2/10, much higher than the film above this one. There's one other Nogi horror film that came out in 2014, do have it but unsure if I'll review it but odds are it'll happen.
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