COLD FISH

COLD FISH

  

by: Senor Woo

A quiet couple and their teenage daughter live a seemingly quiet life. That is until the daughter gets caught shoplifting. A nice old fish store owner offers to have the daughter come work for him to teach her responsibility and worth ethic. The fish shop owner also befriends the girl’s father and becomes his mentor. Unfortunately for the poor shlum dad, he is not just teaching him how to be a man and succeed in life, but how to murder, dismember, and properly dispose of a human body.

I decided to watch this movie after reading the summary that started out by saying “a gory serial killer movie…” SOLD! Well, I had no idea that it was two and a half hour long Japanese movie. This is more than just a horror movie though. It is a character study of a man who is not respected by his wife, daughter, or anyone in his community. He is shy, and a pushover. He finds himself being mentored by a loud mouthed, know it all fish shop owner. By the end of the movie, he is transformed into a bad ass that doesn’t take shit from anyone and demands respect from his family. But at what extremes did he have to endure to get to this point? Well, a lot of rape, murder, dismemberment, and torture to name just a few.

COLD FISH is a crazy roller coaster of a movie that only the Japanese can pull off. It starts off as a real slow burner. It’s not boring by any means, because it really develops the characters, which makes all the crazy shit that happens later in the movie more potent. The violence is abundant and graphic, and there is enough sex and nudity throughout to satisfy all you horn dogs. There were some major plot twists that came out of nowhere that I really dug. I won’t spoil those here though.

The more I think about this movie the more I like it. Sure it was slow in parts, but it was to serve the movie. And just when I thought I knew what direction the movie was heading, it threw a nasty curve ball at me. Check this movie out, but make sure you bring your attention span with you.