Kenichi Ugana’s absurdist Incomplete Chairs is a bloody strike at consumerism and materialism. Fantastically gory from beginning to end and filled with deathly dark comedy, you can’t help but have a fun old time with one.

Shinsuke Kujo (Ryu Ichinose) is a chair artist who is trying to figure out how to create the perfect chair. Via social media ads, he interviews people at his apartment/workshop. Still, his intentions are far darker than these unsuspecting people could ever have imagined.

Incomplete Chairs is a film that has the thinnest of plots, but boy, does it make the most of that string plot to provide us a cold look at a man overwhelmed by revenge and the urge to kill the idiots (in all forms) in this world.

Shinsuke Kujo is an obsessive, a man who lives by a specific code. On the outside, he comes across as one of those stereotypical creative types who are slightly off; those around him would call him quirky. However, inside that apartment, he is a different beast —an obsessive bound by rage and revenge who endangers anyone who comes upon him.

One of the clever things about Incomplete Chairs is the fact that our protagonist isn’t even particularly interested in chairs. He has done enough research, but really, Shinsuke wants to put his hammer through people’s heads in his bubble-wrapped, plastic sheet-laden home. He has created an obnoxious facade to trick those he deems idiots. Creating a social media account and reposting European chairs as his own designs. He just wanted to draw people into his sphere — those inclined toward the material, the rude, etc. He wants to be rid of them all, and now, utilising his interest in chairs, he has a reason to murder to his heart’s content.

So dark-humoured is Incomplete Chairs, we even get scenes on our murderer’s balcony where he tries to make dismembered lower legs stand up on their own so he can start the creation of his chair. Couple this with him drying the flayed skin of a victim OUT ON THE BALCONY with the hands flapping as if it’s waving at us. Then, if you weren’t aware that Kenichi Ugana is here to have a fun old time with his film, I don’t know what to tell you.

While there are many laughs and winces throughout the film, Incomplete Chairs does fall a touch repetitive. You sense that Kenichi Ugana and co-writer Suisui Fukaido had many encounters and gruesome deaths thought up for the film. But we go one or two too many, which slows the film’s pacing, taking it from something that should be hammering through the deaths and the plot like Shinsuke’s bloody, cloth-covered mallet. It should be relentless to leave the audience breathless. Instead, that hammer is needless, beating the point of the story into our minds when, in reality, it already had us.

Despite that, this is still a rollickingly fun film with plenty of shining moments throughout. One main thing to take away from Incomplete Chairs, though, if you are sitting in a plastic sheet-laden room and someone asks you if you would sit on a ten thousand yen chair or a one million yen chair, be careful with your answer.

★★★★

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