Noriko's Dinner Table

Through a barrage of fragmented images of lurid events, escalating hysteria and sheer madness, Sono holds up a cracked mirror to modern life, inspiring the viewer to think with unexpected seriousness about what it means to be a human being.

This meditation on loneliness and the definition of family is a lot less bloody—though no less fascinating—than its predecessor.

Neither a prequel nor a sequel. Nor is it really much of a horror movie: It's a bizarre, bloody family drama that puts its predecessor into a larger social context.

There's not nearly enough blood to keep fans of "Suicide Club," or the rest of us, happy.

This 159-minute feature doesn't quite cohere. Mr. Sono's direction is haphazard; he oversells the first half's whimsical touches and the second half's spiral-of-doom emoting. Still, the movie is worth seeing, if only to experience a small story with impossibly grand ambitions.

Although told through a cascade of flashes forward and back, the puzzle doesn't quite form a complete picture by the end, which may leave genre fans frustrated but the arthouse crowd intrigued.

It’s telling that the freshest portions of Noriko’s Dinner Table are the flashbacks to Sono’s previous film.