Japanese director Sion Sono has a reputation for extreme cinema. If you were shocked by his “Suicide Club” (2001) — in which 54 uniformed schoolgirls hold hands and jump in unison in front of a subway train in one of Tokyo’s busiest stations, sending up geysers of blood — wait till you see his latest, “Cold Fish.” It’s nearly 2½ hours of nonstop violence, bloodshed, gore and body parts revolving around a serial killer who runs a tropical-fish store. When I saw “Cold Fish” at the Filmex festival in Tokyo last November, I asked Sono where he got all the blood. Some of it was fake and some was from butcher shops, he assured me. “No animals were hurt in the making of the movie.”

The slasher shocker will unreel at the Film Comment Selects festival (“16 films you will not see in US theaters”), opening later this month at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater.