A bullied girl seeks to avenge the deaths of her parents, grievous injury of her sister and the fire that destroyed their home.

This was a ...meh film for me. There was some effort put into most of the characters and that's always a big thing for me. The acting was decent but the pace was a bit slow.

I've seen some reviewer's commenting on the level of gore but I wasn't impressed. I watch a lot of horror though and I may be a bit desensitized from over exposure. It just wasn't as gory as I expected.

It's not awful so, I say check it out.

Japan horror movies never been associated as ordinary. They came with a sense of twisting mind and often involved violence in blood, graphic, and some others in stylized way. Liverleaf follows an easy narrative that has been implemented in numerous revenge horror movies, with some twists to give some depth unlike Hollywood movies in that subgenre (ex. The Last House on the left, I Spit on Your Grave).

Liverleaf told a revenge story from a bullied teenage girl named Nazomi when her family is burned alive in their house. The story takes simplest of premise you could take, but in 2 hours of the movie, this movie also give the characters a story, something that seldom happened to a revenge film. The humanization of the characters, including the homeroom teacher's odd behavior, the silence of a girl who just witnessed the bullying, and the backstory of some bulliers, reveal much about a life full of hardships in the small town. Some of them are quite petty, but the backstory gives a sense of reason to the plot. Honestly, some of them are quite forced, because at the same time it feels weird to know that the class is filled by corrupted minds. Who must take the blame? This question probably can't be answered correctly by us, or by the characters.

In a way, this movie gives a new fresh addition to a revenge story. Sometimes it is good to have a revenge movie that only involves blood, but I never expected that gives a prolonged sequence of background gives a reality and reason that I never know needed by the subgenre.

"Liverleaf" could have been a whole lot better. It just goes on for so much longer than it needs to that you completely lose interest, and the violence, which is probably the film's main draw, just gets tiresome.

The movie makes you wait quite a while for its first foray into amateur surgery, and it is truly shocking. But after a while it just becomes dull. Material that should pack more of a punch does not, because you get so used to the blood and guts that you stop taking it seriously.

The plot is about a girl who attends a small rural school in Japan, where she is sadistically bullied by the other girls. Even her father is assaulted by boys at the school when he meets with one of her teachers.

The movie COULD have been a kind of meditation on bullying and revenge, and at times it feels like it's trying for that. But it's far too long, and far too violent, to really take seriously, and whatever moments of seriousness are fleeting.