It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film in the way it's shaped our thoughts on a new release. I'm Tasha Robinson, here once again with Scott Tobias, Rachel Handler, Keith Phipps, and behind the scenes, producer Genevieve Kovic. This week we're talking about Battle Royale, Kenji Fukusaku's 2000 horror thriller, about teenagers forced to fight to the death by a corrupt and coercive government that wants to keep its citizens frightened and helpless. On the last episode, we talked about

the Battle Royale Hunger Games controversy, Battle Royals camp elements, and how it works as metaphor. This

time around, we're going to bring the Hunger Games movies more to the forefront as Mocking

Jay Part 2 looms in the immediate future, wrapping up the series that began in 2012 with the first Hunger Games movie directed by Gary Ross and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hensworth. Again, as a heads up, none of us have seen Mocking Jay Part 2 yet because it won't screen here in Chicago until two days before its release. So we're talking here about the series as a whole, with everyone invited to bring a topic to link the two films.

Keith, you want to start?

Let's talk about the style of the films, The Hunger Game series versus Battle Royale, which is interesting.

I found at times Battle Royale almost played like a slasher film, and maybe it's because they were in the woods so much.

But there's definitely sort of the things popping out of nowhere to kill you element of it.

It seemed a little more chaotic,

a little more in the middle of the action.

I've actually only seen one other Fukusaku film,

and that is not necessarily one for probably top of his resume.

It's called Message from Space,

which is this 1978 Star Wars rip-off, which was sort of

like neatly, has some neat designs to it, and it's almost totally incomprehensible, but really a lot

of fun. But it also has this kind of like, a lot of the battle scenes are very much like almost like

combat footage, where you're kind of there in the middle of the action you're kind of stuck in there

at the point of view is very close to the characters and i found that style is very consistent with

battle royale however however different the films are now hungry am series is interesting because i

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