TAG is another offbeat movie from Japanese cult director Sion Sono, possibly his weirdest yet. The story follows the pitfalls of a young schoolgirl who finds herself the sole survivor of a shocking and inexplicable accident; her day just gets weirder from there. This abstract movie doesn't make a whole lot of sense; rather, it's a thematic piece exploring fate, predestiny, alternate realities, death and violence, all in Sono's inimitable style. It's very bizarre to sit through, dodgy at times (it seems, like his protagonist in LOVE/EXPOSURE, Sono loves upskirting) and featuring lots of gruesome, outlandish CGI death scenes which are hardly realistic. At times it feels like little more than a string of extraordinary set-pieces with some mumbo-jumbo exposition in between. On the other hand, it's also fresh and original, and I can guarantee you won't have seen anything quite like it before.

This movie is hard to explain and also hard to watch. You could make a strong case for it being very incoherent, but you could also argue the opposite. And it's not that one or the other would be right overall. What you can say about this, is that it completely messes with your head (avoiding other words here,to keep it family friendly).

But the completely over the top and also very violent content will either appeal or appall you as a viewer. The very weird story, that I couldn't really explain even if I tried to, has the same thing going for or against it, depending on your point of view. If you want and can wrap your head around things happening (you can't just watch it and do other stuff, the movie needs your overall, full and undivided attention),then you will be entertained - if you are into that sort of strange storytelling that is

An outrageously splattery clip posted on YouTube - a grisly school bus massacre, with all but one of the occupants sliced in half by a supernatural wind - originally piqued my interest in Tag, but for some reason it has taken me three years to get around to finding and watching the whole movie. Was it worth the wait? Just about, I suppose.

The film opens in style with the aforementioned YouTube scene, a great attention grabber but a terrible waste of a bus full of perfectly good Japanese schoolgirls!. The sole survivor of this strange and bloody event is Mitsuko, who runs down the road in a state of shock pursued by the wind, which also bisects anyone that the poor girl meets along the way. Things get even crazier when Mitsuko legs it through the woods (providing the film with the first of many upskirt shots) and arrives at school to find her friends still alive and well. After recounting her story, Mitsuko and pals decide to skip class and go to the lake, where they have a pillow fight and tell a story (which involves a crocodile hungrily snapping at the crotch of one of the girls).

Then, as if the film wasn't already bonkers enough, the girls' teacher goes nuts with a mini-gun during class, Mitsuko wakes up as 25-year-old Keiko, who goes kill crazy before her marriage to a man with a pig's head, and Keiko becomes Izumi, who tears cables out of the arms of her friend Aki. Is Mitsuko mad? is she sliding in and out of parallel dimensions? Is she a participant in an eXistenZ style game? Don't ask me, I haven't a clue. Strangely enough, I still had a reasonable amount of fun with the movie despite not understanding the plot, largely thanks to its general craziness and the wanton carnage (even though much of the gore is of the unconvincing CGI variety).