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HORROR 101: THE A-LIST OF HORROR FILMS AND MONSTER MOVIES  VOL 1

(2006)
Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
Starring Ryuhei Matsuda, Hitomi, Masanobu Ando, Ren Osugi, Yoshio Harada, Shinya Tsukamoto

Director Tsukamoto takes the basic theme from the 1984 film DREAMSCAPE, but then puts his stylistic spin on it, while incorporating a pretty decent mystery.  A young man has the ability to enter people’s nightmares to help them figure out the cause of their nightmares.  But the toll it takes on him is too much, along with the constant onslaught of the thoughts of the people around him.  He just wants to end.

At the same time, the police are investigating what appears to be the suicide of a young woman, who apparently killed herself while on the phone.  And then they find another victim of very similar circumstances, but this time with a witness.  But we as the viewer have seen that these people are being killed in their dreams by some unseen attacker.  A female police detective, new to the department, tries to get the help of this young psychic to discover who or what is causing these people to kill themselves.

Tsukamoto is still best known for his first film TETSUO, which is filled with hyper-kinetic camera moves.  This film does have some of those elements here, but they are only kept during some of the attack sequences.  That helps, since that style can get old and tiresome pretty quick.  But here it is used just to give the effect of the attacking force  and even gives some creepiness to it  This is due to the use of the jerky camera, we’re not really sure what we are seeing, only glimpses of something bizarre and scary looking.

He also makes some great usage of color in the film, or more importantly, the lack of color.  In some of the dream sequences, most of the color is bled out, making it appear almost in black and white.  But yet the color of some items stand out more than others, especially red blood.

On a slight serious note, the other scary element to this film that may not sink into the American viewers is Japan’s problem with suicides.  Over the last 10 years, Japan has had an average annual suicide rate of 30,000 people.  That is twice the numbers of the United States.  Due to the stress of the economy there, a lot of people feel that is their only way out.  And that can be pretty scary in its own right.  The characters in this movie are fighting their own inner demons.  Whether it be the desire to just end it all, or perhaps some tragic moment from their childhood that is haunting them, these demons can tear you apart.

With all the Japanese horror that has been flooding the market since the original RINGU came out back in the late 90’s, and with all the lame American remakes as well, it was nice to see something a little different.  Here you have a combination of some the usual Japanese ghost/mystery/revenge story, but thrown into the Tsukamoto blender, coming out with something that tastes similar, but yet different and refreshing.

The film stars Japanese pop star Hitomi as the troubled detective, out to prove that she can handle the job.  For her first time role, she does a good job.  She has the look of this detective with a dark past down pretty good.  Especially since she is a huge pop star and one wouldn’t imagine that she could ever have thoughts of suicide.  As usual for his films, director Tsukamoto plays one of the main characters as well.

Released by Dimension Films under their Extreme label, the disc at least comes with a nice and long featurette on the making of the film.  The featurette is almost an hour long and was made during the filming process, letting us see how Tsukamoto works with the camera, and the other actors.  Most of the major cast are also interviewed.  The movie and the featurette all are subtitled.