Noriko's Dinner Table Review (2005)

Noriko's Dinner Table is a messy, emotional, strange family drama wrapped in the skin of a psychological horror movie.

May 08, 2026

Noriko’s Dinner Table is way too long and occasionally disappears up its own backside, but when it works, it lands hard enough to make the exhaustion worth it, mostly.

The film is a both a prequel and companion piece to the 2001 film Suicide Club.

Plot

Teenager Noriko Shimabara abandons her family, seeking Kumiko, an online group’s leader. She joins Kumiko’s circle, which spirals after 54 students commit mass suicide.

Good Points

Deeply unsettling exploration of identity and loneliness
Emotional performances across the cast
Strong atmosphere of emotional disconnection
Takes some bold risks
Cold visual style perfectly fits the tone
Themes lingerin your hrad

Bad Points

Extremely overlong and demanding pacing
Some scenes drag far beyond their purpose
Certain themes get hammered repeatedly
Sometimes drifts into pretentious territory
Logic behind parts of the mythology feels a bit shaky

2005 Japanese psychological horror film Noriko's Dinner Table (Japanese: Noriko no Shokutaku), directed by Sion Sono.

My Thoughts on Noriko’s Dinner Table

This film is emotionally exhausting on purpose

That’s honestly the best way I can describe it this film, and after you finish watching it, you will feel like you have spent a week trapped inside these characters’ emotional breakdowns.

But despite how draining it is, you have to admire the commitment to that feeling tje film puts on you.

Also, if someone goes into this expecting another chaotic film like Suicide Club, they’re probably going to spend the first hour wondering if they accidentally clicked the wrong film, as this trades almost all of that earlier film’s tension and unpredictability for long conversations, emotional collapse, identity crises, and existential sadness - a lot of sadness.

The pacing is absolutely brutal at times

At 159 minutes long, the pacing is tough, so some scenes continue way past the point they need to, and then they keep going even longer, just in case you somehow missed the emotional devastation happening in front of you.

But there’s definitely a line between immersive and exhausting, and this film crosses it repeatedly, even if the themes of loneliness and identity is raw and honest, and will hit you hard too.

Nobody gets magically fixed here, nobody suddenly figures themselves out, as here the characters spend the entire film trying to become someone else because they no longer know how to exist comfortably as themselves, which is painfully believable at times.

Everyone feels disconnected

You get this constant emotional emptiness hanging over almost every scene, so even when characters are talking directly to each other, it feels like they’re separated by invisible walls, and the film keeps circling the idea that people have become performers in their own lives rather than genuine versions of themselves - and when say it circles it, I mean it hammers that point repeatedly.

The performances stop it collapsing

The cast are a big reason the emotion heaviness lands hard, and aweaker version of this film could’ve become unintentionally ridiculous very quickly, especially because parts of the story get incredibly strange and theatrical, and even during the film’s more abstract or awkward moments, the actors make it feel sincere.

It also refuses to clean up its characters to make them audience-friendly - they’re selfish, distant, messy, frustrating, emotionally damaged people - where they hurt each other, drift apart, and cling to unhealthy things because they don’t know what else to do.

It’s a film that also shifts tone - one minute it feels profound, and the next it feels fairly exhausting, and that balance shifts constantly, featuring moments where the film genuinely says something powerful about isolation, identity, and emotional detachment.

But then there are other moments where it feels like the cinematic equivalent of someone cornering you at a party to explain why modern society has lost its soul, and you’re just standing there wondering how long this conversation is going to last.

And you will feel like that.

Also, one thing I did really struggle with was how heavily it tries tying itself back into Suicide Club, as part of what made that film work was how chaotic and unknowable everything felt, but here, the more it tries to explain or connect ideas together, the shakier things become, where some of the logic genuinely falls apart if you think about it too hard.

But after a while, I did stop caring about the mechanics because the emotional atmosphere became more important than the actual plot.

Final Verdict

Noriko’s Dinner Table is a very exhausting film, but there’s something very very human buried underneath all its emotional chaos, and it’s a film you won’t ever forget watching.