Final Rating: 2/5
Don’t Call It Mystery, directed by Hiroaki Matsuyama, stars Masaki Suda as Totonō Kunō, a socially awkward high school student with a Sherlock Holmes-like knack for observation, and a proclivity for detective-work to match. On a trip to Hiroshima, Kunō is enlisted by Shioji Kariatsumari (Nanoka Hara) to help solve a family feud.
In the wake of Kariatsumari’s grandfather’s death, the patriarch of the family bequeaths a storehouse to each of his four grandchildren and promises his inheritance to the grandchild who can solve an associated puzzle. While a high-stakes series of riddles would already warrant the involvement of a high school detective, things quickly grow more serious as disturbing secrets about the Kariatsumari family are revealed.
Starting from an innocuous riddle about ensuring each storehouse contains neither excess nor lack, every scene adds a new wrinkle to the story of the Kariatsumaris. One storehouse contains an incomplete set of dolls, another two pieces each of an abundance of “unique” pottery, while a third storehouse is just a prison. Each character has a secret and a backstory that may hold the key to solving the mystery of the family legacy. Especially in a story that takes so many cues from Sherlock Holmes, attention to detail is important, and Mystery certainly has details in abundance.
But it’s just as important what the filmmakers do with those details. A good mystery should be solvable for anyone willing to pick up on important details that might seem inconsequential at first. If the audience is paying close attention, it’s possible, often even desirable, that they should determine the identity of the killer before the detective can reveal his version of events. “I saw the ending coming from a mile away” is a common complaint levied against mysteries, but it’s actually an essential part of the genre.
Disappointingly, while interesting, the central mystery is presented without that essential solvability.
Events in Mystery never play out in a very interesting way, and the filmmakers rarely give the audience the opportunity to draw their own conclusions. On several occasions, Kunō will demonstrate his detective skills with a Poirot-style play-by-play of the last few minutes of the movie, but nearly always in service of some ultimately inconsequential red herring.
Bigger reveals tend to involve Kunō having noticed some detail off-screen that ties everything together. Crimes essential to understanding the family history are not even implied until nearly the end of the movie, and while every character introduced ultimately ends up being important, several appear only at the beginning and end of the film, their roles in the plot both inconsequential and opaque in the time between.
The acting is overly melodramatic in service of a clunky script with confusing continuity. Not much thought seems to have been given to what’s happening even just beyond the margins of the screen, as characters will often appear or disappear whenever it’s convenient. On more than one occasion, a character who was relevant in the last scene, or will be relevant in the next scene, is shown in the background, patiently waiting their turn.
To complement the emptiness of Mystery’s world, the score is so quiet it feels like an afterthought. Occasionally, loud classical music is used in lieu of an original score. Sometimes, the music will cut out mid-song for no discernible reason. The inconsistency alone is frustrating, but the effect on the tone of the film is maddening.
While billed as a standalone film, Mystery is the second adaptation of a serialized comic following a series for Fuji TV. The star, director, and writer of the series return. And throughout its two-hour runtime, Mystery feels more like a TV Special than a theatrical release movie. As a TV Special, it might work, but as a theatrical film, Don’t Call It Mystery is never compelling.
Don’t Call It Mystery was seen during the 2024 Toronto Japanese Film Festival.
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