Calling this "action" or "thriller" is quite the stretch and a disservice to both the movie and the audience. Certainly there is some ten minutes or pretty good gun-fu towards the end, all wrapped in dreamy surreal symbolism. But it follows after over an hour of pointless overexposed high school drama meandering to classical piano music. I can see how it would work in what I presume is a manga original, but as a movie it does not.

Despite Oshii bring a somewhat renowned director it helps to be careful when it comes to his live-action works. There is Avalon which is great but then there's also something like Assault Girls which is just plain horrible. Coming from a series of Live-Action Patlabor films he is back to something less known. I was under the impression that this was actually based on a manga but I'm not sure where I read that. Screenplay and story are not done by him though. The story follows an art student who was once hailed to be a genious. For reasons unknown she suffers from PSTD and gets quite the special treatment from the school staff, much to the anger of her classmates. She of course gets bullied with no one doing much about it. As she slowly gets her body healthier she also gets her mind back (to quote her doctor)... The first two thirds of the movie are really slowly paced with slow camera movements and little revelation about the main characters trauma. It isn't until the last third that shit goes wrong and she does exactly what you expected her to. With the scenario and clues dropped I didn't quite understand the ending, leaving me more questions than answers. While this isn't as bad as AG it is still a clunky mess.