Youth suicides hit a 30-year high in Japan in fiscal 2017, with 250 kids of high school age and under taking their own lives. Ijime (bullying) was a factor in many of these deaths, but there were others, as well as many unanswered questions.
So Yukihiko Tsutsumi's "12 Suicidal Teens" is timely, if not the sort of plodding, well-meaning film Japanese directors tend to turn out on social issues. Based on Tow Ubukata's 2016 novel, the film bears a passing resemblance to "Suicide Club," the 2001 Sion Sono cult hit that made luridly stylish entertainment out of mass suicides.
Instead of leaping off a train platform to their deaths, like Sono's 54 schoolgirls, the film's teens are vetted online by one of their group — 15-year-old Satoshi (Mahiro Takasugi) — who selects 11 for what his website calls a "painless death." One by one they make their way to a creepy abandoned hospital where, after following an elaborate security procedure, they find themselves in a large room with 12 beds. At noon, their smiling host makes his entrance — but in one of the beds is already a teenaged boy, apparently dead.