Another year, another handful of Takashi Miike movies to track down. This month, we caught his wild "The Mole Song – Undercover Agent Reiji" at the Fantasia Film Festival (review here), and now the filmmaker is ready to drop another movie at another fest.
"Over Your Dead Body" will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival, making its International Premiere in the Vanguard Section. Judging by the brief trailer, Miike’s switched to dramatic thriller/costume drama mode. Here’s the synopsis: A star, Miyuki Goto (Ko Shibasaki) plays Oiwa, the protagonist in a new play based on the ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan. She pulls some strings to get her lover, Kosuke Hasegawa (Ebizo Ichikawa) cast in the play, even though he’s a relatively unknown actor. Other performers Rio Asahina (Miho Nakanishi) and Jun Suzuki (Hideaki Ito) lust after Miyuki. Off stage the cast’s possessive love and obsessions exist as reality. Trapped between the play and reality, the cast’s feelings for each other are amplified. When it becomes clear that love is not meant to be both on and off stage, love turns into a grudge and crosses the blurred line between reality and fantasy.
And if that’s not enough for you, the director has another movie opening in his native Japan this fall, "As God Says." It’s an adaptation of a manga and it involves schoolkids fighting each other. Oh, Miike. Watch that below too (via Twitch).