User Reviews

This is a very artsy and experimental film that is full of disturbing and phantasmagorical images. It is difficult to watch and follow at times. Best viewed as an experiment.

It's so visually striking that you could never fully describe Tetsuo in words. But here are a few that apply: Japanese, hyperactive, perverse, industrial, surreal, Faustian bargain, contrasty, black-and-white, Kafkaesque, scifi, stop-motion, manga-influenced, revenge, technology, alienation, supervillains.

Shinya Tsukamoto is an actor (he's the antagonistic "Metals Fetishist" here as well as Jijii in Ichi the Killer) as well as a ground-breaking writer/director/cinematographer. Tetsuo's influence can be seen clearly in directors as diverse as Darren Aronofsky, Takashi Miike, and even David Cronenberg.

There is definitely a plot, but due to the non-linear editing and sparsity of dialogue you'll need to pay close attention on a first viewing or else you'll be overwhelmed by the engrossing visual style (which might be a good thing). It's filmed in contrasty black-and-white. Each frame is cramped and chaotic, much of the time it's filled with wires, pipes, chain-link fences, and all the other incidental debris of life in the late 20th century... which suddenly seems significant and even menacing.

Towards the fifty-minute mark (it's 67 min. total) the willful excess starts to feel a little too excessive, perhaps the manga influence is a bit too strong. But Tetsuo finishes strong, with an end that's at once unexpected and inevitable. Highly recommended.

Japan is a crazy country. Their workaholism is affecting western culture all the time. Coming to Tokyo first time, one can get lost not only in translation, hehe, but mostly in all these technological gadgets that leave you with only three questions: "what the hell is this for?", "what the hell is that for?", and "how the hell does it work?". On one side, coming to Japan, one might see something very rare today: amazing technology next to tradition, remains of culture hundreds and thousands years old. But on the other, Japanese does seem to have a lot of fear about all that technology. Won't that materialistic, technological approach kill emotional and spiritual aspects of human existence? There has been made a lot of movies asking that question, projecting hypothetical versions of future based on what Japan looks like today. See Ghost in the Shell for example. Yeah, alright, but what does Tetsuo have to do with all that crap? Everything. This Tsukamoto piece of art is a manifestation of great great fear of cold and soulless technology. Main character is a guy who has rather serious problem: one day he notices that metal parts are slowly beginning to reveal themselves from under his skin. Why, and what does it mean? Where will it lead to? You'll see. What I can say is that you don't need to live in Japan to enjoy this movie. The atmosphere is amazingly unconventional, and can be compared only to other industrial/anti-industrial masterpieces of Japanese cinema. The movie is black and white only all the time. Camera work is incredible, it builds intense paranoid atmosphere. If you've seen other Shinya's movies, you know what you can expect. The way the story is told, with all these cut-and-paste elements... oh God :D If you've already seen some totally psyched-out movies like this one, you might get a laugh sometimes, otherwise I guarantee you'll be strongly shocked, because as I said before: you probably haven't seen anything like this before, so watch your back, you have been warned ;) Budget used to make this movie may be equal to something like two cokes and a hamburger, but, as we can see, some don't waste even that small amount of money. There are movies made with a little help of millions of dollars which are not even worth a cent. On the other side, there are gems like this, where you can't notice signs of low-budget, because it doesn't harm this movie even in one moment. I can't think of one thing I'd change in this movie. Highly recommended, this one is a blast!

PS. If you're willing to get some other Tsukamoto movies, avoid Hiruko the Goblin.

Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo has been one of my favourite ultra underground Japanese films for some time now. I've watched it many times, and the film is always as effective, stunning and outstanding as it was when I first saw it. Now I viewed it again last night, and I am totally shocked and speechless, when it comes to this masterpiece of Shinya Tsukamoto, the genius multi talent behind films like Tokyo Fist (just don't try to watch if you think Raging Bull is too much), Gemini and Bullet Ballet. If I had to choose one film among all the films that really blew me away like this, I'd probably choose Tetsuo.

The "plot" and premise is simple. A metal fetishist (played by the director himself) inserts pieces of metal into his own body with often bloody results, understandably. He becomes run down by a car after which the fetishist starts to have very severe changes in his body and starts to mutate into human/metal monster and the man who ran him down starts to have similar changes in his body, too.. What follows is 60 minutes of total surreal mayhem, nightmarish imagery and use of perhaps all the imaginable cinematic techniques in editing, photography and music. You have been warned!

It is hard to describe with words the power of this film, which has often been referred as a combination of Lynch, Cronenberg and of course Anime and Sci-fi. The photography is stunning to say the least as director's 16mm camera twists, turns, runs, falls, climbs, zooms and does all the possible ways the director could invent to create this kind of atmosphere. The film consists of (very) fast edits, flashbacks, nightmare sequences and images and fast forward photography that spiced with incredible soundtrack is something never before seen. The soundtrack is made with different sounds of metal hitting together, scratching against something and most notable, there is also synthesizer use to create very ominous and threatening atmosphere that never stops, and the music is again one of the most important elements of this film.

The effects are totally outstanding as the director made them by himself. The film is black and white and that is of course great choice to nightmare film like this. Tsukamoto also wrote, directed, photographed, art directed and edited this film among special effects, and the most help he got came probably from Kei Fujiwara, who plays the girl friend in the movie, and she also directed her own similar film, Organ, in the middle of the 90's. It is incredible how Tsukamoto managed to do all this by himself and the help of some others, but due to his talent, it all becomes possible. This film is very low budget, but it is the kind of punch to senses that only very few big budget films have managed to give. If I had to choose one "big budgeted" film that has almost equally stunning atmosphere and power, I'd mention Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, which is another masterpiece from this young director/writer. Still Requiem and Tetsuo are very different films, but their power is almost - if not entirely - equal.

The theme of the film is obviously the fear of technology and how far it will be developed. The film ends pretty pessimistically and it underlines the fears and threats that are in the air and were in Tsukamoto's mind, too. The images of huge metal machines and motors at the beginning of the movie, are very ominous and the machines seem to be alive and are very nightmarish overall, even though they should be DEAD machines because metal doesn't live, at least yet. This reminded me of work of David Lynch and his Eraserhead and Lost Highway, which both create something very ominous, dangerous and very scary with these similar techniques of close ups of water spilling, engines working and smoke coming closer. Just remember the images of radiator and coffee-pot in Eraserhead and mystery man and smoke (among many others) in Lost Highway. The feeling in Tetsuo is exactly similar, even though the things themselves are not scary or threatening, because they should be only dead pieces of metal and plastic, products in other words.

Shinya Tsukamoto made also sequel to Tetsuo, but it is in color and never as stunning as this brilliant original, but still worth checking out for lovers of this kind of cinema. Shinya Tsukamoto is among Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Ishii and Takashi Miike the most interesting, personal, creatively lunatic and overall stunning artists to come from Japan today, and by watching their films, all the nonsense entertainment coming too often from Hollywood nowadays is easy to forget and just concentrate on these miracles in the field of cinema. Cinema is magic and Tetsuo is one example to show that for the lovers of independent films, since this is not going to reveal to mainstream audience due to its difficult imagery, violent scenes of nightmarish terror and overall personality that demands a lot from the viewer. This is far too difficult and intelligent cinema for mainstream audience, and thus would never come out from some big studio that wants only money and commercially potential films.

Tetsuo is a 10/10 masterpiece and one of my personal favourites. I've tried to describe this film as clearly as possible, and without using too many praising adjectives, and since this movie's power is somewhat hard to describe with words, I recommend that all the lovers of Japanese cinema and the ones who think they're interested in Tetsuo check this out and see and experience the magic for themselves.

The first time, and perhaps the last, depending on how you feel about it, you watch TETSUO: THE IRON MAN, you'll sit wide-eyed. Your mouth will open, emitting sounds of choking mixed with laughter.

TETSUO is a fever dream at light speed interrupted by jolts of sexual sadism and mega-violence. It's techno-industrial mayhem on acid. Whatever it is, it must be seen many times. Not to further understand it, but to allow the viewer to relive the same nightmare.

Director Shin'ya Tsukamoto not only created this miraculous abomination, but stars in it as the demonic Metal Fetishist, whose plot to dominate the world is fulfilled through metal-flesh infusion.

When your mouth finally snaps shut, love it or hate it, all you'll be able to say is: "Ho-lee $h!t! What the hell was that?!"...

I can honestly say that this is the strangest movie I have ever seen. It is not bad, just really weird. There doesn't seem to be any other way to describe it well. It's also very easy to get lost in it. Crazy camera action. Crazy things. Crazy people. WEIRD!

This is another one of those films where you have the "sheer brilliance 10/10" battling against the "worst film of all time 1/10" people. I'm not partial to either, I wanted to see this film after watching a preview that was so intense it made my brain hurt. So I absolutely had to pick it up at the video store.

Tetsuo, more than anything, is absolutely surreal. The cinematography and camera work is way ahead of its time, and I have never seen anything quite like it. The stop motion and use of metal twine and scrap is stunning and also menacing, especially with the heavy industrial-electronic soundtrack thumping throughout most of the film. I imagine that some scenes must have taken ages to go through frame by frame and create the visual image of cyberpunk terror that is conveyed in this film.

Besides these things I can't credit the film for much else. Some say it's impossible to follow, but the story is quite simple. A metal fetishist that has been inserting pieces of metal into his body is hit by a car, and begins to transform and haunt the person responsible. Then he begins to transform, and his world quickly spirals down as he becomes the metal obsessed monster that his crash victim was already into. However, there are lots of parts of this film that don't contribute to the overall image of the film, and a few scenes that could have been replaced with something entirely different and were a little slow and unnecessary. While hilarious, there is a scene involving the man and his "woman" (as credited) that, while serving a purpose, became more of a sick joke than a part of the film.

As the movie continues on you get more and more lost as to what is going on when cuts become more frequent and the film becomes extremely frantic and fast paced. I viewed it a second time to see if I missed anything, but I felt the same after a second view. Tetsuo is good for its expiremental editing and cinematography, and has its place in cyberpunk filmography. But if you're looking for a film with solid scriptwriting and direction, you're not going to be happy.

Sheer genius? On some aspects, yes. Worst movie ever? You have to be kidding me. There isn't much talking in this film, and the worst films ever have way too much talking in them. Sometimes it's nice to have the actors shut up and, maybe, scream in terror at a piece of metal sticking out of their face instead.

Wow. Unreal. You know what it feels like to bite down on aluminum foil or hearing chalk scratch on a blackboard through Bose speakers over and over again? This resembles what a viewing experience you'll have watching Tetsuo.

Trippy, bizarre, surreal. The sequence of events are just mind boggling that it's a bit trying to take it all in at once. The black and white definitely shows a very gritty, bleak environment and there's great use of dark color tones and shadow. Add some manic performances, great camera angles, and a very raw hardcore soundtrack which just intensifies the insanity even more. Definitely have to give it to the design crew because their attention to detail adds to the overall weirdness. There's even a love story in it too!

Very cool flick.

It's safe to say that 'Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)' is a weird movie. In fact, it's probably the weirdest film I've seen. That's true of both its narrative, which sees a salaryman slowly transform into a metal abomination after he's involved in a hit-and-run with a mysterious metal fetishist, and of its construction, which is basically just an in-your-face salvo of bizarre and borderline unsettling imagery. The thing is so over-the-top that it's almost funny. It's quite difficult to describe the picture, to be honest. It's not so much a movie as it is a sensory overload. Still, I think I like it. It's unconventional and uncompromising. Of course, it isn't the most straightforwardly enjoyable affair. It's certainly not for everyone. However, if you're interested in this sort of fringe fare then this is well worth a look. 6/10

Okay, here's my best shot at describing Tetsuo The Iron Man: What if Seth Brundle's DNA was merged with a scrapyard and the contents of Radio Shack instead of an insect?

The above sentence doesn't even come close to adequately summarising what this surreal experimental Japanese horror is about, mainly because, to be totally honest, I didn't have a clue. A mind-boggling hour-and-a-bit of kinetic visuals, accompanied by a cacophonous industrial soundtrack, Tetsuo appears to be more about the cyberpunk aesthetic than it is the narrative, although apparently there's a story in there somewhere, amidst the writhing wires, flailing tubes and whirling phallic drillheads - I just wasn't able to find it, possibly because of the intense headache I got from all of the manic black and white visuals and the horrible clanking sounds that pass for music.

Shin'ya Tsukamoto's debut undeniably possesses bags of energy and boundless creativity, but the manner in which it is presented is so inaccessible that only the most pretentious fans of cult cinema would hail this as a masterpiece. At best, it's an interesting curiosity; at worst, it's a reason to reach for the ibuprofen.

3/10. Could have done with being at least half the length - the shorter the better, in my opinion.

This is definitely one unusual and fine directed movie but it's not quite interesting enough to hold my interest throughout.

I absolutely loved the movie for its first part but the movie sort of start to loose it more toward its end. It's already a strange movie for most part but toward the ending things start to make even less sense and you basically start to have no idea anymore what is happening on the screen. You could say that the movie is too long, even though its barely over an hour short. Things in this movie could and should had been wrapped up sooner and perhaps would had been a better watch if it was going somewhere different with its story toward the end.

But for most part "Tetsuo" is simply being a visual experience. Just like the original short it got based on, by the same director, the movie focuses on its images and is all about its overall visual orientated directing approach, that makes the movie one weird and intense trip. It's really an artistic movie, that once more shows that movies don't necessarily need to have a real story or point in it to make an intriguing watch.

Good and interesting, for most part, if you like 'different' and more artistic cinema.

7/10

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'This film is not for everyone' is one of those empty sentences that gets thrown around with some kind of films. But if there is a film that fits the saying, "Tetsuo" is it. Utter bonkers, making no sense whatsoever (well, a kind of flimsy one), the movie is an almost silent film with amazing imagery but close to zero story.

It all starts with a guy running around after sticking a metal rod on his leg. It all continues into lots of crazy moments that seem to revolve around a salary man that little by little becomes a kind of mixture between machine and human. Like your average Kafka. But with lots of more sexual innuendo (subtlety be damned). It is all quite interesting and shocking, but, even at just a little over 60 minutes, it becomes repetitive and some (or many) viewers will end up thinking: why the heck I am caring about this?, because the film seems to be more a study on monster creation than on telling anything. And that is also taking account the more than obvious idea of man becoming machine that runs throughout "Tetsuo"'s running time.

As it is, it is fascinating, but it can't overcome its shortcomings.

This movie can be explored in many ways: the relationship between human life and technology is the first which comes to mind. Then maybe this fits into a larger theme of industrialization. Still, there are several ways of interpreting each scene and at times I had the feeling that they try to show - or to produce a metaphor for - human emotions, such as cheating, sorrow, the will not to die alone. "And we can rust the whole world and scatter it into the dust of universe" You will certainly make what you want of this movie. You may understand that technology is evil, that industrialization takes our souls away, or that even in our worst moments we crave for closeness and we don't want to be alone. This is a special movie - so beware - it is not accessible to most people. There's a chance that you won't be able to think for yourself and that you'll expect some quick & nice Hollywood conclusions which you're not going to get - in which case, this movie will be a waste of your time.

I heard about this movie reading a comic book magazine in elementary school. It piqued my interest and I searched for it on video for rental for several months before finding it. Also included on the video was a short film entitled "Drum struck" which didn't interest me at all. The real meat was Tetsuo.

The "plot" of this film revolves around a businessman (who apparently like to have sex with his girlfriend in public places and film it) who is involved in a hit and run auto accident with a metal fetishist. Soon the man appears to be hallucinating about people sprouting metal appendages until it begins to happen to him. Chunks of scrap metal grow like cancerous tumors. Soon, they're not random scraps but working appliances such as drills. If this isn't bad enough he soon finds out the man he hit (played by the director of the film) is in fact alive and rather peeved.

Absolutely insane violence permeates the film which retains its punch through the black and white film.

The review I read about this film compared it to Eraserhead (A film I still have not seen) which I believe says a lot about Eraserhead. To compare it to a film I've seen I'd say it reminds me of "Un Chien Andalou" with about three more lines of dialog and a lot more gore and violence.

I also recommend the sequel Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. It's similar but bigger. Color, dialog, etc.

10/10

Japanese employee Tetsuo is just having an average day until he runs into and has an accident with a strange guy who has shoved metal objects in his body. After that, strange things start happening to poor Tetsuo as metal pieces appear on some parts of his body and becomes almost like a semi-cyborg as the person who originally started the whole accident begins to taunt him through his horrifying transformation to the path of destruction.

Weird and mind bending Japanese Sci-fi horror shock-feast with surreal and disturbing imagery blended with bizarre special effects and stop motion animation with it as well, the movie is a hyperactive and gory little movie with a complicated plot but some nice gore and violence along with it. The movie is like a dark nightmare come true in the tradition of David Lynch and David Croneberg, this film is not for every taste but worth a view if your into Japanese flicks, Sci-fi with horror and gore flicks.

Also recommended: "Videodrome", " Scanners", " Akira", " Re-Animator", "Dead Alive", " Street Trash", " The Fly ( 1986)", " The Toxic Avenger", " Doom", " Day of the Dead", " Ichi The Killer", "Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky", "Battle Royale", "Versus", " Perfect Blue", " Eraserhead", " High Tension", "Caligula", "Hostel", " Bad Taste", "C.H.U.D.", "Evil Dead 1 & 2", " The Thing ( 1982)", " Shivers", "Rabid", "The Brood", " Terror Firmer", " 3 Extremes", " Fist of the North Star ( 1986 anime version)", " Ghost in The Shell 1 & 2", " Driller Killer", " Troma's War", " Predator", " Cannibal Holocaust", " Cannibal Ferox", " Cannibal Apocalypse", " Basket Case", " Sin City", " From Dusk Till Dawn", " Vampire Hunter D (1985)", "Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend", " Demons", "Suspiria", " Inferno", "Phenomena", "Terminator 1 & 2", "City of the Living Dead ( a.k.a. Gates of Hell)", "Bio-Zombie", " House By The Cemetery", "Hellraiser 1 & 2", " Evil Ed", " Nightmare on Elm Street Series", "Freddy Vs. Jason", "Tokyo Fist", "Oldboy", " Shogun Assassin", " Jason X", "House of Wax (2005)", "Blood Diner", " Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday", " Bride of Re-Animator", "Beyond Re-Animator", " Metropolis ( 1927 and 2001 versions)", " Natural Born Killers", "Maniac ( 1980)", "Last House on The Left", " Se7en", " Jin-Roh", " Saw 1 & 2", " The Elephant Man", "The Devil's Rejects", "Men Behind The Sun", "Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger part 4", "Robot Carnival", " "Troma's War", "Combat Shock" and "Blood Feast".

"Tetsuo: the Iron Man" is utter chaos. Shinya Tsukamoto has created a strange world of metal fetishists and human decay. To make it all the more insane, it's filmed at the pace of a speed adrenaline rush. An office worker slowly transforms into a mutated metal creature after cutting himself shaving. Wires, drills, cables and steel burst from his face and body. And who can forget the giant metal drill penis? The office worker faces off with a villain who has a metal fetish. The villain enjoys sticking metal objects in himself. The film turns into a battle to the finish between the two men. "Tetsuo" has to be one of the strangest films ever made. Stranger than both "Eraserhead" and "Begotten". It's fast pace style can be later seen in films like PI. Thank God, this film is in black and white; it's extremely graphic!

This really is one crazy mental movie, vying with David Lynch's Eraserhead for most bizarrely freakish bit of black and white weirdness. Piling some really quite disturbing imagery into a melange of stop-motion animation, sped-up and slowed-down film and lots and lots of fast-cut montages, this gradually builds into an at least slightly coherent plot involving a man slowly turning into a giant metal monster, then fighting some kind of rust-man-woman-thing on jet-powered skates. All of which is pretty much subordinated to the often almost nauseating power of the images. There's plenty of blood and gore on show here as people find various metal objects growing into and out of their bodies, fighting each other and at one stage having some pretty gruesome metal-on-flesh sex when our 'hero' sprouts a big scary drill from his groin. This is visceral viewing at best, perhaps one of the most intense and disturbing films ever created, definitely not for the fainthearted. If you can handle it though it is an interesting exercise in how extreme a filmmaker can be, and also asks some important questions about the predominance of the artificial in the modern world and the possibility of bionic implants creating a man-metal hybrid. A definite must-see for anyone interested in extreme cinema

This weird film is about a man who has some weird fetish for sticking metal objects into his body (!). However, one day the fetishist is accidentally killed by a salary man (Tomorowo Taguchi) who was driving a car, the salary man hides the body by dumping it into a ravine. However, the fetishist gets his revenge by coming back to life and make the man suffer by slowly turning some of his body into scrap metal, making him become part-human and part-metal. It's a lot more weird than it sounds but it's highly recommended (mostly to fans of David Lynch and David Cronenberg). It's filled with great stop-motion and makeup effects, has a cool soundtrack and has a plot that's totally bizarre yet very original. There is no doubt that this movie is one of the best underground films of all time.

Compared to other movies I've seen which I've either strongly liked or strongly disliked, my experience with this one was pretty peculiar. I can't say that I wish I didn't see the film. I also can't say that it was a waste of time seeing this. However, I also can't see myself recommending it to my friends anytime soon or re-watching it again.

After a businessman hits someone who recently inserted a rusty, metal rod into their leg, metal slowly starts to pop up on his body as he begins to mutate into a massive chunk of metal.

When the film first opens up, you get a couple minutes of quiet and calm pacing showing someone walking down an alleyway. Make sure you enjoy those couple minutes while you have them because the film doesn't give you much time before it quickly turns into a non-stop, frantically paced film with realistic and gory visuals which follows those couple quiet minutes. This film is incredibly fast-paced and it doesn't have any quiet and calm moments after the opening where you can catch your breath. The film is so determined with keeping this pacing that even the credits scene doesn't give you time to relax. I actually really liked its pacing because it made it stand out from pretty much all other films I've ever seen before. It gave the horror genre a great feeling of originality.

Speaking of fast-pacing, it also has grotesque visuals and effects to accelerate the film. They look realistic, and it can be a visual train wreck to see metal combine with flesh. The gore in this film is a horror movie fans dream. However, the biggest reason why I think that the visuals work so good is because of the stop motion that many parts of the film has. Considering that its shot in black and white, the stop motion gives it sort of an old, classic feeling. On top of that, seeing the stop motion in some of the scenes made me question why stop motion isn't used much more often in horror films. I feel like it works very good, and it would provide a massive feeling of originality if more films used it. Horror film directors should replace cgi with stop motion practical effects.

With all that being said, this film succeeds exceptionally well on visual and technical levels. However, director Shinya Tsukamoto puts so much effort into being a perfectionist in these aspects that he doesn't leave room for anything else besides violence and gore.

When I was getting to the end of the film, I kept on asking questions like "When are they going to focus on developing the characters?" and "Why is this whole film treated like its one big action packed climax?". Since character development is so minimal, I did not feel any emotional attachment to the characters, and they just seem like empty shells fighting for their lives. Its great that Tsukamoto was trying to make this film succeed visually and technically. However, as a result of doing this, he, in turn, had to sacrifice character development and depth to keep the outstanding visuals and frantic pacing.

Another issue I have with it is that it can be occasionally hard to follow at times. It often jumps from one scene to another so quickly that it can be difficult to tell where the next scene starts and what is happening in it. The most confusing scene is the dream sequence. It made no hints that a dream was going on, and I had no idea that what I saw was a dream until I looked it up online after watching the film. The issue with Tsukamoto's directing is that he assumes you'll be able to figure out what's going on. There were some scenes where I was able to figure out what happened with little to no problem, there were some scenes where it took me a little while to figure out what happened, and there were some scenes like the dream sequence which were so hard to follow that I had to look up its plot in order to understand what happened. There were also a couple scenes which felt completely out of place such as the sex scenes. If your body is mutating into metal, you're not having sex with your girlfriend. You should be frantically trying to do something about it. Also, the film kept on cutting to something which looked to be a sex tape several times. I have no idea what the point of including that was, and I also had no idea what it had to do with the film.

In conclusion, I had very mixed reactions to this. While many style over substance films would be dismissed as garbage, this one made its visual aspect so good that it felt like one of the more original horror films in years. Tsukamoto's directing choices helped it to be much better than what it would've been if the visual aspect had been less impressive. Unfortunately, the visual aspect was not enough to distract me from the lack of character development, and it was also a bit hard to follow at times. I feel like there were 2 ways Tsukamoto could've gone about to creating this. The 1st way was to make it like this. The 2nd way was to sacrifice the originality aspect such as the frantic pacing in order to focus more time at developing the characters. I don't know which choice I would've picked, but I can at least give the film a lot of credit for achieving near perfection in the visual aspect, even if the result was style over substance.

There's no need for yet another review of this movie citing it's kinship with Buñuel, Lynch, and Cronenberg. It is a remarkable feat of filmmaking, whatever one thinks of it otherwise. I'm glad I watched it once because it is considered a classic of cyberpunk and modern Japanese cinema, but I don't plan to watch it a second time.