Oni-gokko [Tag] (Short)
Shane Ryan’s “Oni-gokko [Tag]” is filled with haunting, dread-filled imagery in eight, brief minutes. (Below is the shorter, five-minute cut. For this review, I was given a password-protected Director’s Cut that saw release in 2015.) The film starts with young, Japanese woman, covered in cuts and blood, and the words, “Tag, you’re it.” We then see another Japanese woman going down the stairs, and a person is underneath the stairs, slitting the balls of her feet with razor blades, saying, “Tag, you’re it.” And then, a conversation, wherein the original young woman, no longer bloodied, but with cuts all over her body, is talking to the one who was walking down the stairs. They are sisters, and the one with cuts is trying to convince the other one, it’s you’re turn. The one with cuts jumped to her death recently. Substance is almost always going to be short with a film that is this brief, but Ryan’s film thrives on the images it gives us, and the implications this one-on-one encounter has. That’s what matters, and it’s a good thing that Ryan is able to deliver, because otherwise, there would be little reason to seek this out at all.
Oni-gokko (Tag) from Mad Sin Cinema on Vimeo.
