The Snow White Murder Case (2014) - Yoshihiro Nakamura

Yuji Akahoshi is a low-level employee for a popular news program.  One night he receives a phone call from his old high school friend, Risako, who tells him that her co-worker was the victim in the "Snow White Murder Case'.  This is the most popular case in town, the brutal death of a beautiful comestics company employee, and Yuji sees this as his potentially 'big break'.  Yuji begins interviewing the workers at the company for his television show, seeking to discover the identity of the person responsible for the Snow White Murder.  Yoshihiro Nakamura's The Snow White Murder Case is a dense murder mystery that plays with perspective, painting an intricate and compelling story with enough twists and turns to keep the viewer guessing until the end.  This is a film that pays no attention to the actual criminal investigation, choosing instead to focus on the pulbic and media's interpretation of events, capturing the sensualization and rush to judgment that plagues our current society.  Nakamura's use of social media feels a bit lazy at first but it quickly becomes an ingenius tool, effectively capturing the destructive power of social media and how quickly it creates a group think mentality.  We see a woman's life almost completely destroyed by this desire to quickly judge, with simple and quite silly misunderstandings and interpretations threatening to completely destroy an innocent woman's life thanks to the quick and deft hand of public opinion.  An effective and engaging mystery thriller in its own right, Yoshihiro Nakamura's The Snow White Murders is a powerful statement of the rampant rush to judge that technology has created, demonstrating the terrifying capabilities of swift and uneducated judgemental practices.

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