Film

Angel Dust (1994)

Director: Sogo Ishii

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

This psycho-thriller about urban paranoia (from the director of Crazy Family) suggests terrifyingly that the millennium is already with us. At 6 pm each Monday a killer strikes on the Tokyo metro, silently injecting his female victim. In shades of Manhunter, an expert in abnormal criminal cases (Minami) is brought in to try to enter his mind; she intuits that the perpetrator can sense the feeling of isolation and self-destructiveness in people. The trail leads to the HQ of the Ultimate Truth Church, in the shadow of Mt Fuji, a centre for rumoured reverse brainwashing. Beautifully acted, superbly shot, this erotic, enigmatic film has the compulsiveness of Gilliam's Brazil mixed with the darkness of Lang's M. Quite how many levels it works on is up to your own sympathies - or should that be empathies? The film is an uncanny pre-echo of 1995's Aum Shinrikyo's metro gas attack.

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