The masterfully crafted sensory overload that is Helter Skelter (Herutâ sukerutâ) is one of the best horror movies about fame and stardom in the last 10 years. Directed by fashion photographer Mika Ninagawa, one of the stand out elements of this movie are the photoshoot montages that flavor a story being told by insiders to its body-destroying world.

Helter Skelter is truly in a league of its own both visually and narratively.

The film was adapted from the original Kyoko Okazaki manga by Arisa Kaneko. Okazaki writes about modern life, but when Helter Skelter was being published, “life” was the mid-90s. Updated for 2012, main character Lilico’s (Erika Sawajiri) Tokyo is splashed with her image stories tall on digital billboards and speckled with narrative drama from glowing cellphone screens.

The story itself begins with a splattering of body horror that will build, but is hardly a focal point for the more minute moments of ickiness. Opening on Lilico’s most recent cosmetic surgery to ensure she appears youthful, the character’s needs are immediately set as physical: Manipulated by her handlers, she requires her body be changed to continue being profitable to them and to maintain her luxurious lifestyle.

There is a quickly building realization throughout the film that fame and money have not brought her happiness yet and will continue to create more problems in her life. Lilico’s reactions to the creeping rot appearing on her skin is to ramp up torturing those around her. Rivals, assistants, assistant’s boyfriends, and many others are the eventual victims of her murderous and sexual rage as she takes drugs, initiates disturbing sex (queer and otherwise), and tries to please fans.

Building the aesthetic of manufactured femme mayhem required exacting control over every scene. The careful placement of each pill during an overdose in a tableau, every single set being carefully assigned a color palette that extends to wardrobe and make up, as well as the blocking of characters for maximum impact like a magazine splash page create an interiority and physical intimacy reminiscent of Anna Biller. Shoved between these scenes the shots of runway fashion, glossy magazine covers, and gossip in hip cafes by visually conscious teen fans feels almost documentary. Yet they are no less calculated.

It’s rare to have a film commenting on female stars written and directed by women, and it makes one wonder what films that fell flat like 2016’s Neon Demon, directed and co-written by Nicolas Winding Refn, would have been like had it been helmed by different hands. Unlike Neon Demon, Helter Skelter comes from an extremely popular work that was being produced over a decade after the story had ended. The director was interested in the rights to this story as one she connected to growing up and working in Tokyo, but the rights took years to obtain.

Speaking to BFI in 2016, Ninagawa touched on both her perspective and working with a much-beloved story, saying she “strived to keep the original’s female perspective, to fully express those senses that are unique to women that are not necessary logical and sometimes difficult to explain. I also did my best not to submit to pressures that ‘films must be such and such’ that exist in the Japanese film industry.”

Her last comment speaks directly to something so many women face in any film industry, especially those trying to tell any stories with queer elements. The struggle with that dual tiered layer of criticism Ninagawa expected when directing this story does not come through in the final product: Instead it’s a polished piece that falls gleefully into its excesses. The characters are horrified, unlikable, and relatable in equal parts as we travel through rage, sniveling, and pure conceit from all of them in unique ways.

There are no heroes but there are characters we wish could have lived in a world that had survivors.