Ohayou, guys! Yesterday I've watched a touching and disturbing movie. Black Rat (also known as Kuronezumi) is a film by Kenta Fukasaku, who gives you the key to a world of violence, envy and hatred - all displayed by peers of a one very peculiar girl. Asuka always smiles, even when people are mean to her. When they insult her, she thinks it's her fault and apologises. Her friends treat her without respect and don't care for her feelings. When her boyfriend dumps her for the class idiot, she still smiles and thinks of them as friends.

The breakthrough comes when Asuka prepares a school act. Her classmates agree to participate but later ignore the girl and don't tell her for a long time that they don't intend to participate. After being utterly humiliated, Asuka writes a farewell letter where she says it was all her fault, dances for the last time and jumps from the roof, killing herself wearing a rat mask she deisgned for the school act.

The people who cared for Asuka blame her friends and soon decide that they should take vengence for her. They lure the teenagers into their school at night and lock the building down. Wearing rat masks, they catch and torture the young people who's behavior led to Asuka's suicide. It's worth to mention that some of them got the chance to win their forgiveness by completing a task they are completely unprepared for (it's an analogy to the fact that the friends refused to practice for the act Asuka prepared).



The psychological aspect of the movie makes it a masterpiece. Young, confused kids trying to take vengence for their loved ones are portrayed as murderers who act out a plan with finesse. Unpredictable twists make this movie plot hold you in it's grip until the credits. Avenger confronted with Asuka's true friend accusing them of not knowing anything about the dead friend who was always cheerful and wouldn't want to harm anybody. Class dork who would do anything to gain peer acceptance. The cute-looking girl who turns out to know self defense on a martial arts level. Those are the treats the author prepared for the viewer.

The motion picture features flashbacks to the times where Asuka's friends hurt her feelings, shown in relation to the way they were treated by the avenging murderers. Especially the ending leaves a lot to think about after watching the whole movie. Black Rat is a pearl in a psychologist's movie collection