her thesis is that events seem to be set in stone, but you can change fate by doing something impulsive and unexpected, which is why she's so weird all the time
Mitsuko and her surviving friends all try to escape the school, while the faculty have all pulled out heavy weapons to try and slaughter all the students for no reason
on the other hand including the notion that the perpetuation is connected to a male gaze and desire to fuck a never-ending protagonist has its own aspect to it
leaving in itself wouldn't have been sufficient because she didn't fully understand the depths of her situation and how she and her friends were being abused
see the thing is i broadly agree with that read, but imo making it About The Male Gaze does ring a little hollow when the movie is also being relentlessly horny about teenagers on its own
like even if it's doing that to make a point, the production of the movie itself is still exploiting those teenagers despite the fictional framing involved
it kinda kneecaps itself on its premise because to deliver it with maximum effectiveness it needs to replicate in-fiction an actual real world phenomenon which is still uncomfortable
That's honestly the problem with stories like these, of course. How do you condemn something that the movie has been simultaneously courting? How do you make it clearer you're condemning it without freeing the audience from its culpability by making them recognize it's uncomfortable?
hi i used to read a lot of film crit