A girl is kidnapped and held captive for 40 days. She never made it out alive.
So since I’m making movie commentaries about the three movies about Junko Furuta, I’m also making new reviews of the movies. I’m that kind of guy. I can’t help it.
This movie has a stupid title! This is the first of three movies that the Japanese have made about the Junko Furuta case. The second movie was Juvenile Crime (1997), and the third one was Concrete (2004). Luckily for us, they have made no new ones after Concrete (2004).
Concrete-Encased High School Girl Murder Case is in the same vein as Concrete (2004). They feel very similar, but Concrete (2004) had a bigger budget and better actors.
Concrete-Encased High School Girl Murder Case feels like a true crime episode. There’s a man in a studio who tells us something. He doesn’t shut up. The problem is that there are no English subtitles to be found. It doesn’t exist as far as I know. So you have to watch the movie without English subtitles. And the guy who’s the narrator sometimes thinks he’s acting on a stage. He’s a thinking man. He dreams of acting in a Shakespeare play. Shut up, old man! Shut up!
With the short runtime, the movie shows us a few minutes of who Junko Furuta was before she got kidnapped. We see her on her bicycle smiling and enjoying life, and that she works in a factory. She smiles a lot, and that’s all. But who was she as a person? After that, her forty days in hell begin.
The perpetrators don’t have any sort of depth or personality. The leader talks to some characters that I don’t know who were. I believe one of them was a yakuza member. But other than that, the perpetrators are like blank sheets. They have no soul!
The movie isn’t graphic. They have used their budget on Junko Furuta’s badly injured legs after the boys burned her badly. Just like what we saw in Concrete (2004). They keep Junko Furuta locked up in the room where they play games, sniff glue, and do horrible things to Junk Furuta. She tries to escape, but that doesn’t end well for her.
The actress who plays Junko Furuta is better than the actress in Concrete (2004), but not by much. You can’t be any worse than the actress in Concrete (2004). She couldn’t convey the feeling of pain. But the actress in Concrete-Encased High School Girl Murder Case isn’t that much better. When the perpetrators let her go out to get some fresh air, she walks around absolutely fine, and you can’t see that she is in emotional distress. And it doesn’t look like she’s hurting at all. This doesn’t work for me or you!
Watching Concrete-Encased High School Girl Murder Case is just wasting your valuable time. I will not repeat myself too much, but as I said in the Concrete (2004) review, a competent director should make a movie about this case so that we never forget the name of Junko Furuta. Check out my new review of Concrete (2004), where I share my thoughts about how they should make a movie about this case that honors her name.