Movies
hate pimps, such as Morgan Freeman in Street Smart, but they usually
find madams sassy and fun, like Dolly Parton in Best Little Whorehouse in
Texas. The power couple of this alleged thriller happen to be a madam and a
pimp, but they are both wildly problematic. Sadly, the term ill-conceived
applies to almost all aspects of Adam Sherman’s Tokyo-set She’s Just a
Shadow, which is now barely playing in New York.
Honestly,
the opening scene is so utterly repellent and completely irredeemable, only
true professionals will make it past the first five minutes of Shadow.
Let’s call out Sherman right here and now, because he directed, wrote, and
produced this exercise in soul-deadening cruelty.
A
serial killer has been killing women in a truly horrific manner. The part where
he ties them to train tracks like Snidely Whiplash is the only aspect of his
M.O. remotely fit for polite discourse. Irene the madam and Red Hot the pimp are
not very concerned about the escalating death toll, until the freak starts
targeting their girls. Supposedly, Irene was more preoccupied with the power
struggle she had been waging against her rival, Blue Sky, but the two
exploiters were really more interested in partying with the girls and their
vacant-eyed pal, Gaven.
Somehow,
Shadow manages to be disturbingly violent and glacially slow. As a
thriller, the film is a complete bust. Our protags figure out who the killer is
about halfway through, but they opt to do nothing about it, leaving him free to
murder more women in their employment.
Among
the “woke,” labeling a film misogynistic is a lazy way to demonize films that
are not to their aesthetic liking, but in the case of Shadow, it really
is true. The violence and belittling of women here are beyond excessive. As an
added bonus, Sherman periodically throws in tripped out psychedelic Ozu buffer-transitions
from Hell, including utterly baffling shots of smiling blue teeth.
Sadly,
this film represents a perilous misstep for Tao Okamoto, who had been building an
international rep in some major Hollywood film and television shows (including The Wolverine). Arguably, she is actually pretty good as Irene, but everyone
else around her is a mess, flailing around and mangling the dialogue they
appear to be repeating phonetically. For obvious reasons, that makes the
ridiculously over-written voice-over narrations even more awkward and
embarrassing.
This
is a bad film according to any objective standard. Sherman cannot even earn credit
for the naughty naked bits, because the women’s makeup is so distractingly
garish and unattractively heavy. There is flat-out nothing to see here. Absolutely
not recommended, She’s Just a Shadow still has a couple of lonely
screenings to go at the Cinema Village in New York.
