After a mysterious cosmic event, a number of teenagers awake with psychic powers like telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition and mind control. Limited in number (only virgins who were masturbating when hit by the cosmic rays were granted abilities), they are soon recruited by an organisation who monitors such activity to prepare them for a battle to come, a battle which seems to largely involve dozens and dozens of sexy women.
It wouldn’t truly be the Edinburgh International Film Festival without at least one batshit crazy movie from Japan. The Virgin Psychics starts well, revelling in its histrionics to shameless extent, such as an early scene featuring nominal hero Yoshirō treating an act of self abuse as an epic undertaking as his mind swiftly cycles through the bevy of beautiful girls and women who have caught his eye.
True to its manga origins, the film feels very much like a live-action anime, revelling in the sheer unapologetic ridiculousness of its porny setup. Additionally, each character seems capable of talking only in dramatic pronouncements delivered with far more weight and gravity than the world would themselves suggest.
After receiving his powers Yoshirō does his best to act like what he believes a hero should be, despite the fact there is not much occurring that requires him to be a hero. Aside from the nebulously defined inevitable emergence of evil psychics and a perverted girl creating a private army of fembots, there is very little in the way of true antagonism to drive the story, and so it descends into various set-pieces of scantily clad girls acting out the fantasies of teenage boys, any semblance of plot becoming overshadowed by the film’s joyful perversion and lost in a directionless cycle of endless smut. Believe it or not, there actually comes a point where watching beautiful, shapely and relentlessly horny young women dressed in various kinds of fetish gear and displaying eye-popping cleavage actually gets a little tedious. Things become further complicated at the halfway point with the appearance of several new busty babes who integrate themselves into the story with very little indication of how we’re supposed to react to them.
Everything eventually culminates in a muddled finale that fails to make clear what the genuine revelations are supposed to be, or offer any sense of true conclusion to the story, making you wonder what the point of it all was. A strong setup let down by vague and inconsistent plotting, The Virgin Suicides would likely have been a lot more fun if, ironically, it took itself a little more seriously. In short: more story; less boobs.
THE VIRGIN PSYCHICS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SION SONO / STARRING: SHOTA SOMETANI, ELAIZA IKEDA, ERINA MANO, MAKITA SPORTS, MOTOKI FUKAMI, KEN YASUDA, MEGUMI KAGURAZAKA, ROSA SAHEL / RELEASE DATE: TBC
Expected Rating: 7 out of 10
Actual Rating:
