As the Gods Will (film)

Kamisama no iu tōri
Directed by	Takashi Miike
Produced by	Yûsuke Ishiguro Shigeji Maeda Misako Saka Hisashi Usui
Screenplay by	Hiroyuki Yatsu
Based on	Kami-sama no Iu Toori by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akeji Fujimura
Starring	Sota Fukushi Shōta Sometani Takayuki Yamada Mitsuru Fukikoshi Ryunosuke Kamiki
Music by	Kōji Endō
Cinematography	Nobuyasu Kita
Edited by	Kenji Yamashita
Production company	Toho
Release date	October 18, 2014 (2014-10-18) (Rome Film Festival[1]) November 15, 2014 (2014-11-15) (Japan)
Running time	117 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

As the Gods Will (神さまの言うとおり, Kami-sama no Iu Toori) is a 2014 Japanese supernatural horror film directed by Takashi Miike. It is based on the first arc of the manga series of the same name by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akeji Fujimura. Funimation will release the film in the United States.^[2]

Plot

High school student Shun Takahata spends much of his time playing violent video games. One morning at school he whines that his life is completely boring but then he suddenly finds himself forced to participate in a game of Daruma-san ga koronda with death as the penalty for losing. When the Daruma doll turns toward the blackboard it exposes a button on its back that the students can attempt to press to end the game but if the doll spins back around and sees anyone moving then those students' heads will explode. Everyone in the class except Shun dies in this first game.

After the game, Shun finds his childhood friend Ichika and they make their way to the school gym. There they play a Maneki Neko, where students dressed as mice attempt to throw a ball into a hoop attached to the collar of a giant cat doll. Those who miss are killed. Amaya wins this challenge and enables the students to move on to the next challenge in a giant cube hovering Tokyo, as hundreds of schools in Japan and elsewhere face similar tests where only handfuls of students survive.

Shun must keep winning a series of different deadly children's games in order to protect himself and Ichika. He has no knowledge of who is behind the games or what their ultimate purpose is. Meanwhile, a troubled classmate named Takeru seems to revel in the opportunity to cause the death of other students. When he and Shun fight, they and Ichika were being put out of consciousness by sleeping gas released by the giant cat doll.

The next game is Kokeshi, where the students have to be blindfolded and will guess which of four floating Kokeshi wooden dolls is behind them within 10 seconds. If they fail to do so, they will be hit with a red laser and the dolls will use telekinesis to destroy their bodies. If the Kokeshi lose, they will explode and one of them releases an answer key which opens the doors and frees the students to the next level. There, Shun meets Takase, whom he will save and will enter the next level. He also saves another man and Ichika from being killed by a fifth Kokeshi by holding their hands.

Shun and three others join two men to use their keys to unlock a giant smiling head. Amaya brings in three more keys and kills a prisoner that he brought into the room. The seven survivors use their keys, and the giant head rolls away to dig a tunnel into the next room. Meanwhile, each player is displayed on television screens for the others to see.

The next game is Shirou Kuma, within a frozen room. The students have to answer the white bear's questions politely and honestly, while Takase and a friend get killed. Shun soon realized that the bear was the liar and the bear's real color, black, therefore letting the remaining 5 students and killing the bear.

The final game was Matryoshka, which must be completed before sundown. The remaining 5 picked a stick each and who gets the red one is the ″Devil″. Whoever gets the face shown or seen by the Devil, is caught and thrown into a cell. If you kick the can, Takeru got the red stick and soon, the 3 students have been caught while Shun found armor to make his face not seen. Shun fell into the sea and Takeru pulled the armor so he can be saved. Shun rose up before Takeru pulled out the armor and Shun were the first to kick the can. They had an ice-cream party where they learned their fates, and that the intention of the deadly games were simply for entertainment. Shun and Takeru lived while Ichika and the others were killed by a Matryoshka doll that disintegrated them with its lasers. Shun and Takeru emerge to the top of the cube where they see crowds cheer for them, while a hermit who watches them from his room goes out of his house, possibly to find the real identity of "God".

Amaya celebrates while Shun kneels in despair from all of his losses. Shun states that "there is no God", while one of the Matryoshka dolls suggests that those deadly games were to lead them to "God", as it shows him a vagrant who was also an observer of those games.

Cast

• Shōta Sometani as Satake
• Takayuki Yamada as Tetsuro Shibahara
• Lily Franky as homeless person
• Nao Ohmori as Takumi
• Sota Fukushi as Shun Takahata
• Atsuko Maeda as beckoning cat (voice)
• Mio Yūki as Shoko Takase
• Hirona Yamazaki as Ichika Akimoto
• Jingi Irie as Oku Eiji
• Rena Shimura
• Rima Matsuda

Box office

The film earned $1.5 million domestically in Japan in its first weekend in November.^[3]

References

External links

• As the Gods Will on IMDb