There's internet confusion between this and the previous year's Wanted: For Forced Entry. Don't be fooled. They have completely different stories, although admittedly both films are bleak, shocking Japanese horror-pink films, with the same writer/director and core cast. In particular, the central relationship of both involves a man called Yoshii/Yoshikawa (actor: Yohta Kawase) and a woman or women called Yuriko (actress: Kotomi Asakura).

That said, though, this film is confusing in its own right. Yoshikawa (Yohta Kawase) falls in love with Yuriko (Kotomi Asakura) and they get married. There will, though, be another woman who looks like her... except for the facial scarring. Plus the killing. Ultimately, the film's finale loops back to its opening to establish a tragedy. Unless our heroes are still alive after all, which means a different tragedy. Time-looping? Time travel? Just a non-linear narrative? Or alternate timelines and people making horrifying choices? (Trust me, they are indeed horrific.)

Other things in this film include:

(a) a yakuza who looks after his old school friend. Unfortunately, his idea of "looking after" includes eccentric vengeance. He also employs sex workers, including a specialist brothel called Hitozuma Club Babylon where all the girls have grotesque injuries. (One has a head that's a mess of meat and you might not recognise her as human from a passport photo. Another sounds like a Cyberman when she walks.)

(b) a sex scene where the man's holding a kitchen knife to the woman's throat. She already has facial and other scars. Ewwwww. This ends in Yoshikawa cleaning gore off his truck.

(c) What the hell is that Siamese twin mutilated doll hanging from the mobile phone? NOTE: the film's going somewhere with that.

(d) a psycho with a meat cleaver and what he calls job satisfaction from using it. Sometimes he takes a bath with his victim, but only after hacking her up so much that it looks like an abattoir. (He won't even be getting clean, given the colour of the water.)

(e) "You're about to learn what happens when you mess with another man's wife." This involves power tools.

Does everyone in this film kill, torture and/or mutilate someone? Even the nice ones can't be trusted, either because they've been pushed that far or because they're in a bad way in a bar and two jerks sitting nearby decided to get rude.

Paradoxically, the worst thing about this film is that it isn't unrelenting horror. Yoshikawa's nice. He means well and he forgives. His relationships with the multiple Yurikos are engaging on a human level and you'll want things to go well. (Unfortunately, SPOILER, see the opening scenes.) That's where the narrative derives its power. We care. If we hadn't, this would have been cheap gross-out schlock. Unfortunately, though, we'll be seeing suicide come full circle and (yeeesh) that ending.