The first time I heard the words "Torture Porn" was last year from Jose when we were discussing the popularity of films like Hostel and Saw. Today after watching Daisuke Yamanouchi’s Red Room I realized that I had found a movie that actually lived up to that title.

The story is basic. We don’t need too many people here, just a room with four desperate individuals who will do whatever it takes to take home the money and disgrace and eventually dehumanize themselves in the process. We first meet Hirami, a school-girl who is later revealed to be a boy. He(she?) wants the money for a sex-change operation... honest enough grounds I suppose. There's also a couple in their thirties who need to get out of massive debt and a mysterious girl in her twenties who doesn’t specify in the film why she’s risking so much for the cash. Maybe she does say, towards the end, but the thin yellow subtitles aren’t easy too read and at this point I didn’t think it mattered much. Now, I knew this film was ruthless, so I braced myself come what may.

The game they play goes like this. They are in a room with cameras and audio equipment set-up. They sit round a table and draw a card. One card is the "king". That person tells the group what to do. The movie starts off slow and stupid but believe me it builds. Here we have more sex than gore. Some scenes feel as if your watching soft porn on the playboy channel. I have noticed that Japanese men love grabbing tits. They grab and squeeze and lick the nipples like hungry starving freaks. Do you think I’m exaggerating? There is like a 10 minute scene where the husband beats the wife until she has a bloody face. She’s pissed off and verbally hurts him by saying mean things about their marriage. Then the guy throws her down, rips her clothes off and screws her from behind while she screams. After a beating and a vicious pounding from the rear she looses consciousness.

There are like three intense as hell sex scenes in this movie. The school-girl is discovered to be a boy when he pees in the other girls mouth and she’s forced to swallow. There are like three more crazy things in this movie but I will leave that for you to discover. But I will mention one more to wet your appetite. At the closing of a lengthy foreplay scene the husband (with his wife passed out he can really get into it) has to make the "mysterious girl" (not the he/she) orgasm; now I’m not exaggerating... he spreads her legs apart, wets her vagina with the end of a screwdriver, (then licks it too) slides a light-bulb in and oops... yes it freakin pops inside her. You even see the blood running over the floor. There’s broken glass shards in her cunt! I don’t like to curse, but there’s no other way to put this. And if you think it can’t get worse, well go ahead and rent it. I have Netflix, they (used to) have it.

As I type this I’m just coming down (no pun intended) from the heavy scenes I just saw. But you know I don’t really mind heavy sex as long as there is just as heavy gore. My gore craving was not satisfied tonight. There was sweet blood, piss, and vomit (yes all three are present here) but relatively low gore. I wanted at least some type of dismemberment. Oh now that I think about it there was one but you will have to see for yourself. I want to hype you up! One more thing, the reason I gave the Beasts rating a 5 was because the type of person that would do what is done here has to be a beast. I recommend this film for the tits alone, so go out and find it!

- Jorge Antonio Lopez