Nightmare Detective (2006)

Tonight’s October Horror review is the Japanese horror “Akumu tantei”. In English the title is “NIghtmare Detective”. This is directed by Shin’ya Tsukamoto who is most famous for giving the world the bizarre cyberpunk body horror classic “Tetsuo: The Iron Man”. Staring Ryûhei Matsuda as the titular Nightmare Detective “Kyoichi Kagenuma” and Hitomi Furuya as Lieutenant Keiko Kirishima. Tsukamoto often stars in his own movies and in this instance he takes a smaller but pivotal role of the movies unnamed villain.

Perchance To Dream.

We start with a brief introduction to our reluctant Dream Detective. Kyoichi it seems is constantly traumatized by his abilities. Following this we dive right into the main plot. A string of strangely violent suicides have been linked together by having all phoned the same number prior to their deaths. The person contacted, known as “0” has been using their dreams to murder them.

Keiko is a young gifted detective, bored with her office job and recently transferred to the homicide department. This is her first case and she faces some resentment from others in her team. She is the first to suspect something is not right with these apparent suicides. Once it is clear something strange is going on she is asked to work with Kagenuma.

As the story progresses she eventually puts herself in harms way by contacting “0” and this puts her and Kagenuma on a collision course with the dream killer. Despite the dream angle though, this movie is really about suicide and suicidal thoughts. Both Kyochi and Keiko are interesting characters with depth, both of which harbor suicidal thoughts though only Kyochi has acted on them. Keiko didn’t even realize she was suicidal, which was the only thing that gave the killer any power over her.

In That Sleep of Death.

In regard to the visuals, this is a pretty solid horror. Mostly the villain is only scene in disturbing forms, often with his head hanging off or extended on a snake like neck. When he attacks it is usually in a flurry of knife blows, almost machine like in it’s relentlessness and movement. The scenes of the victims stabbing themselves are brutal and the dream settings are atmospheric. The Dream Detective himself often has visual hallucinations presentably brought on by his abilities where the people around him have their faces twisted up into what looked to me like anuses. Perhaps reflecting his view of the world, where his ability to see into others minds mostly leaves him only seeing darkness.

The story doesn’t spend a lot of time playing on the dream aspect itself (Probably the most notable of which is the opening scene in which we are introduced to Kagenuma). This is something that some people may find disappointing. Plus you shouldn’t go into this expecting something as extremely mental as Tetsuo, it’s not. The story is actually a very coherent character driven. Not that it completely lacks strangeness, but not any more than one would expect from a typical Japanese ghost story. Indeed, this really feels like a ghost story, despite the fact the killer is not a dead.

As you would expect with such themes, this movie is definitely on the melancholy side. Eventually though it brings a bit of hope and optimism to the table, but this is only achieved through the protagonists finding some hidden strength within themselves. It’s quite profound really. This is also an examination of the difference between suicidal thoughts and what it takes to actually commit to the act.

What Dreams May Come.

Whenever I watch a film like this I can’t help but recognize how shallow and two dimensional a lot of American Horror has become. Horror gives a great opportunity to examine the darker side of human nature and Nightmare Detective dives right into this. It reminds me a lot of a movie I watched for last October’s challenge: “Pulse“, on the surface an apocalyptic ghost story, but really about loneliness. Both movies are ultimately very sad, so perhaps not for everyone, but personally I think they are both worth your time. Despite only being rated around 6/10 on IMDB, for me this was a strong 7/10 (Which is also where I scored “Pulse“)