Internet nerd Shun'ichi Noda (Masashi Endô) owes a large sum of money to a violent gang of teenage thugs led by a sadistic homosexual with romantic designs on the poor debtor. Shun'ichi sees a possible way out of his awkward predicament when a stranger on an on-line message board offers to help him, but after arranging a real-world meeting he discovers that, along with two other equally gullible suckers, he has been the victim of a practical joke.
All is not lost, however, and Shun'ichi strikes up a friendship with his fellow victims, who listen to his tale of woe and think that they might be able to raise the cash. The guys go back to Shun'ichi's home to chill out, and are later joined by girl-friend Sayaka (Ryôka Yuzuki). Unfortunately for Shun'ichi, his persecutors also turn up, abduct him and his new friends, and subject them all to a sickening ordeal that pushes the poor chap over the edge.
I'd read that All Night Long 2: Atrocity was an even more harrowing viewing experience than its predecessor, but while it's certainly not Disney, being as downbeat and nihilistic as possible in tone, the film is surprisingly short on protracted scenes of explicit nastiness, its atrocities frequently and rather frustratingly left to the imagination, the camera cutting to the aftermath rather than showing the nitty-gritty.
The most notable examples of this are a bedroom assault on pretty Sayaka that makes a mess of the sheets but which leaves the viewer to fill in the blanks, and the torture of one poor character by a knife-wielding sadist that results in loads of nasty wounds, none of which are shown being inflicted. Given the film's reputation as a brutal shocker, and knowing just how far Japanese cinema is willing to go when it comes to gory torture, I have to admit that I found this approach rather disappointing.
Matters improve briefly when the victims start to fight back against their tormentors, the violence becoming a bit more in your face, with some gnarly baseball bat, samurai sword and blowtorch action leaving a room strewn with bodies and drenched with blood; sadly, the film returns to its original, less explicit approach for its finale, in which Shun'ichi, his mind twisted by what he has seen, goes on to kill his friends (and a rodent for good measure) while the camera lingers elsewhere.
Oh well, maybe All Night Long 3 will do the trick...