As The Gods Will (film)

is a 2014 Japanese supernatural horror film directed by Takashi Miike. It is based on the first arc of the eponymous manga series by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akeji Fujimura. The film was released on home media in the United States by Funimation.

Plot

High school student Shun Takahata spends much of his time playing violent video games. One morning at school, he also whines that his life is completely boring. During class, the teacher's head blows and turns into a Daruma doll, and Shun, along with his friend Satake and their whole class suddenly find themselves forced to participate in a deadly game of Daruma-san ga koronda, with the students getting killed one by one every time they move. When the doll turns toward the blackboard, it exposes a button on its back that the students can attempt to press to end the game before his timer runs out. With the help of Satake, Shun manages to reach the button and presses it to end the game, then Satake dies, revealing that only the one who presses the button will live.

After finishing the game, Shun meets up with his friend Ichika Akimoto and they make their way to the school gym. There, they initiate the second game, Belling the Cat, featuring a Maneki Neko, where students dressed as mice attempt to throw a bell into a hoop attached to the collar of a giant beckoning cat, while trying not to be eaten or crushed. The game is won with the aid of Takeru Amaya, a troubled classmate who beats up other students, seems to revel in the opportunity to see so many deaths, and who kills all the other survivors besides Shun and Ichika after winning the game. The three of them are then put out of consciousness by sleeping gas released by the cat. They wake up to find themselves with other students in a room inside a giant flying cube hovering over Tokyo, facing the next test: students all over Japan and elsewhere in the world face similar tests, and the handful of survivors are being brought inside the cubes.

The next game is Kagome Kagome, where the students have to be blindfolded and will guess which of four floating Kokeshi wooden dolls is behind them within 10 seconds after the end of a short song. 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 player manages to guess who's behind them and the Kokeshis lose, they will all explode and one of them releases an answer key with the students being able to leave the room and enter the next phase. Shun meets and saves his ex-classmate Shoko Takase by winning the game, while two of their roommates, Taira and Taoka get killed, and the duo reunite with Ichika and another player, Yukio Sanada, whom they save from being killed by a fifth Kokeshi by holding their hands.

The four join Eiji Oku and Kotaro Maeda to the next level, where they have to use their keys to unlock a giant smiling Kokeshi 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 Shirokuma, a white polar bear that appears to them inside a frozen room. The students have to all answer the white bear's questions honestly, otherwise, they will be forced to single out the one that they suspect to be lying to be killed. Shoko and Yukio get killed, and Shun soon realizes that the bear is the true liar and that its real color is black, therefore winning the game and surviving with the other four students.

The final game, presented by three Matryoshka dolls, is a game of kick the can that must be completed before sundown. The remaining five each pick a stick, and the one who gets the red one plays the "Devil". Whoever's face is seen and gets called out by the "Devil", is caught and thrown into a cell. Kicking the can in the middle will make it explode, killing nearby players. Takeru gets the red stick and soon Oku, Maeda and Ichika are caught by him while Shun finds armor to conceal his face while hiding. Shun falls into the sea while chaining Takeru to the armor. As Takeru fights to pull the armor up to avoid being pulled down, Shun climbs back up, having freed himself from the armor. Both race towards the can, and Shun succeeds in kicking the can first, thereby winning the game. The Matryoshka dolls reveals that in fact, the explosion is a lie and that none of them will be killed by losing the game. They have a popsicle party, where they learn their fates on the wooden stick, and that the intention of the last game was simply for entertainment. Shun and Takeru get to live while Ichika, Eiji, and Kotaro are killed by a fourth Matryoshka doll with lasers that disintegrates them. Shun and Takeru emerge to the top of the cube, where they see crowds cheer for them, while Enokida Takumi, a hikikomori who has been watching them from his room, goes out of his house, possibly to find the real identity of "God".

Takeru celebrates while Shun kneels in despair from the loss of his friends, stating that "there is no God". One of the Matryoshka dolls corrects him and suggests that those deadly games will lead them to "God", as it shows him a vagrant who was also an observer and the "God" behind these death games.

Cast

*Sota Fukushi as Shun Takahata
*Hirona Yamazaki as Ichika Akimoto
*Ryūnosuke Kamiki as Takeru Amaya
*Mio Yūki as Shoko Takase
*Shōta Sometani as Satake
*Jingi Irie as Eiji Oku
* Ryosuke Yamamoto as Mikinori Taira
*Minori Hagiwara as Yumi Taoka
*Sasuke Otsuru as Yukio Sanada
*Naoto Takahashi as Kotaro Maeda
* Nijiro Murakami as Haruhiko Yoshikawa
*Lily Franky as Homeless man/God
* Nao Omori as Takumi
*Dori Sakurada as Class president (cameo)
*Atsuko Maeda as Maneki-neko (voice)
*Tsutomu Yamazaki as Polar Bear (voice)

Box office

The film earned $1.5 million domestically in Japan in its first weekend in November.

Controversy

The 2021 survival thriller K-drama series ''Squid Game'' has been accused of plagiarizing the movie, as both involve children's games where the penalty for losing is death. However, writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk claimed he wrote Squid Game's script in 2009 (5 years before ''As the Gods Will'' was released), saying "the similarities that were pointed out are purely coincidental and there is no copying from either party.”

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:As the Gods Will
2014 horror films
2010s Japanese films
2010s science fiction horror films
Films directed by Takashi Miike
Funimation
Japanese high school films
Japanese science fiction horror films
Live-action films based on manga
Japanese supernatural horror films
Films about death games