Lost by Dead

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Audience Member If the title of "Lost by Dead" makes no sense, it's just a foretaste of what's to come. There are some very interesting visuals mixed in with the disappointing ones, and the story should be straightforward enough. Akira, our antihero, is a twitchy lone-wolf up-and-coming rock star who gets his devoted girlfriend Mari pregnant, then deserts her. She commits suicide, sending Akira into a downward spiral of drugs, violence and hallucinatory madness that drags along everyone he knows. He ultimately incurs the wrath of a Yakuza boss, resulting in a 20-minute long climax of surreal violence. This is director Tsujioka's freshman effort and he's clearly set out to be a rebel, despite some ready comparisons that could be made between his methods and that of Takashi Miike. There's madness in both methods, but Tsujioka isn't quite as good at it, sometimes making events on screen hard to follow for no reason than inserting some heavy-handed style -- warping images, text, strange sounds and over-wrought depictions of Akira's insanity, to mention a few. He's generous in doling out the violence, too. No more than five minutes goes by without someone being beaten, stabbed or shot, usually with copious splatter. Still, there's nothing particularly original about the film. Tsujioka has obviously been influenced heavily by some of Miike's films. In particular, the way in which he uses text to label some of his sidebar scenes is reminiscent of "Visitor Q," and the whole of "Lost by Dead" is, when one can follow it, an awful lot like "Ichi the Killer" on some levels. Tsujioka shows promise here, but he needs to find his own style and neither flaunt convention for its own sake -- which makes "Lost by Dead" confusing -- nor imitate his obvious cinematic hero, which makes "Lost by Dead" predictable. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Lost by Dead

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