Battle Royale
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Writer: Kenta Fukasaku
Based on: Koushun Takami’s novel
Cast: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Tarô Yamamoto, Chiaki Kuriyama, Takashi Tsukamoto, Sôsuke Takaoka, Yukihiro Kotani, Kô Shibasaki, Masanobu Andô, Takeshi Kitano
Seen on: 19./20.3.2025

Plot:
Every year, one 9th grade class is chosen in Japan. The class is kidnapped and brought to a specially prepared island, handed backpacks with some supplies and weapons, with only one rule: only one student may leave the island in the end. They have three days to kill each other, or be killed one and all.

I saw Battle Royale not long after it came out 25 years ago. Back then, I was curious about horror movies, but hadn’t really had much experience with the genre yet. Now, I was interested to see how this film in particular would hold up after 25 years and hundreds of horror films watched by myself in the meantime. And I have to say that mostly I think that it lost its shock factor.

I remember being not so much scared by Battle Royale when I saw it the first time as flabbergasted that this kind of set-up and brutality would be made into a film. That this fact in itself doesn’t shock me anymore is probably not surprising. I’ve had almost a quarter century to get used to it after all. Plus, the idea of a Battle Royale with kids has grown pretty mainstream since.

The thing is, this shock was probably the main reason the film made waves, and seeing it without that kind of breathless take surrounding the film shows that it is actually not all that good. The first thing that struck me about it, before we even get to the island, is that it just doesn’t really make sense. Maybe in the novel the film is based on the concept is explained better and they find a reasoning for it that actually does have some logic, but the way the reasons for the „game“ are explained in the film is actually no explanation whatsoever.

Plus, with 40 kids to slaughter, the film just has a lot of dying to get through. We barely have time to distinguish all of the kids from each other before they start dropping like flies, and I found myself often trying to recall who was who, apart from a few central characters. Maybe 30 kids would have been enough and would have given the plot and the characters more room to breathe.

There is some nice gore and the core idea is still fucked up to say the least. The film is well-paced, that’s for sure, with never a boring minute. And I also appreciated the truly romantic belief that threads through it. But still, my memory outshone the actual film a little, I am afraid to say.

Summarizing: maybe I have grown jaded, but this film was better 25 years ago.