Late Bloomer on AllMovie

A man locked inside of his own body plots to tear the whole world down in this aggressively experimental take on the serial killer subgenre from writer/director Go Shibata. Sumida is an enigma, a wheelchair-bound cripple who has little human contact outside of getting drunk with his health-care attendant, Take. Occasionally, Sumida will venture out to one of Take's hardcore metal shows, but even then meeting strangers is nearly impossible due to the fact that he speaks through a voicebox and can barely be understood through the shrieking guitars and deafening feedback. The only thing anyone seems to know about Sumida is what they project onto him. Sumida acts as a mirror to the world around him, his own image hopelessly obscured by the reflections that people see when they stare at him. One day, a young college student named Nobuko arrives to take care of Sumida as research for a school paper she's working on. Nobuko seems open to flirtation with Sumida, but unfortunately Sumida mistakes her playful behavior for true affection rather than the superficial conversation that it really is. When Sumida proposes to Nobuko and Nobuko responds by spending more time with Take, the rage that has been building in Sumida all these years finally takes over. If the world that Sumida was born into cannot accept him for who he is, then he will use every ounce of his being to ensure that nothing beautiful is left in that world.