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“)
So for my final review of the Halloween season (and Happy Halloween to anyone reading this on it’s publishing date) I decided to watch the Japanese ghost story “Pulse” from 2001. I have already seen the Americanised version from 2006, which despite a screenplay from Wes Craven, wasn’t especially good. It did however present interesting ideas and after seeing the original I realise where the film went wrong, but I’ll get to that. My hope was my final review would be an easy one, but I was never going to be let off so easily by a Japanese ghost story. Anyway this one was written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Who even did his own novelisation). The film features two protagonists with parallel stories, who finally meet in the final act. Michi Kudo (played by Kumiko Asō) and Ryosuke Kawashima (played by Haruhiko Katô).
October Review Challenge – Day 31
Michi works in a plant shop. One of her co-workers has been missing for several days while he works on a computer disk to track the shops sales. Michi goes to the man’s apartment to check on him only for him to be aloof during the conversation and casually walk into another room and hang himself. Michi and her friends inspect the disk he left behind and discover it contains an image of Taguchi staring into his own computer monitor, which has an image of him staring into his monitor in an infinite loop. On the other monitor on his desk however they discover another ghostly image staring out.
Meanwhile Ryosuke, a university economics student has just signed up to an internet service provider and is getting on line for the first time. His computer accesses a website by itself showing him disturbing images of people alone in dark rooms. The next day he goes to the university computer lab looking for answers and meets Harue (played by Koyuki Kato). She suggests saving the bookmark or taking a screenshot so she can examine it. That night he attempts to but the computer won’t cooperate and instead shows a video of a man with his head in a plastic bag and the words “Help Me” written all over his walls.
Vanishing People
Over time (I’m skipping a lot of details here) Ryosuke learns a theory that the dead are invading the physical world as their world is over crowded, and they are coming through as a signal that can be picked up by computer equipment. Harue confides in her feelings of isolation to Ryosuke and begins acting strangely. She has concluded that ghosts wouldn’t want to create more ghosts by killing people and would rather trap the living in their own isolation.
Meanwhile Michi has begun to learn about a trend for people to seal off rooms with red tape and that inside those rooms is a ghost and that seeing the ghosts face causes the victim to eventually disappear. All her friends at the plant shop eventually go this way. More and more people begin to disappear around them with a list of apparently endless names being broadcast on an abandoned television set.
Eventually Michi and Ryosuke meet and may be the only two people remaining (In the city at least). They decide to leave the city. Can they make it out and what will it cost them? You’ll have to watch to find out as I’m not spoiling the ending.
Pacing and Atmosphere
Before I get onto the heavy theme of the film I want to touch on the main negative and that is the pacing and length. As a two hour movie it’s moments of tension are spaced out and a lot of events are effectively repeated to help drive home the themes. I can’t help but feel the choice to follow two characters mixed with the need to drive the theme meant the film would always end up dragging in places. A more minor issue is that there is also a degree of character stupidity in how often they go into forbidden rooms, but that at least could be explained by them already being affected by the ghosts. The only one that was truly grating was the last character to do such a thing.
The film has a very minimal soundtrack, but this is for good reason. The silence between discordant noises and ghostly strings give a feeling of melancholy and emptiness to the events on screen. It is a technique that fits the theme perfectly. The soundtrack itself when it plays doesn’t stand out as especially good but it is how it is used that makes it work. Time to talk about that theme though.
You Feel So Lonely You Could Die
Loneliness is the theme here and in a very strong way and watching this now rather than when it first came out the first thing that came to mind is “Hikikomori”. This is a term first coined in 1998 by Japanese psychiatrist Professor Tamaki Saito. Saito chose the term to describe the many young people he saw who didn’t fit criteria for mental health diagnosis, but were nonetheless in a state of extreme, distressing withdrawal. Over the years since this has been found to apply to older generations too and become a recognised terms for the many Japanese people (Mostly, but not exclusively young males) that now live their lives almost entirely in their own bedroom.
When the film came out, though the phenomenon had been noted in Japan it was largely unknown outside and so reviewers at the time likely wouldn’t have seen the link but to me it is pretty clear. The question is, was this referring to something Kurosawa knew about or was he predicting the future based on what he had noted from the loneliness in his own society. Maybe he never intended it to be a social commentary and was just speaking on his own feelings, but now with the Hikikomori estimated to be 1.2% of the Japanese population (around a million people) it certainly feels like social commentary.
Logging On….
In the early 2000’s a lot of people went online seeking to find a connection with other human being via the internet. In doing so that left many of them chasing a connection with people that don’t even know are real at the expense of those around them that are. As a character in the story is manipulated by the ghosts they withdrawal more from their real life friends, their family and their occupation. Harue Karasawa speaks somewhat directly about this, saying all the people in their isolated rooms on their computers are no different to ghosts. It’s worth noting the ghosts even make modem noises as they approach people.
Most of the characters in the film do not start off physically isolated though most are isolated internally. Aloof from society to some degree and as the ghosts start to mess with them they feel more isolated. One of the minor characters makes a remark to Michi Kudo wondering if friendship is really worth it since you both end up hurting each other eventually, Many interactions between characters have this kind of tone to it. People deciding they are alone even when they are not. Harue takes this negativity a stage further by suggesting that even death may be eternal isolation.
Finding The Will To Go On.
Harue also suggests that if the ghosts are here because their realm is overflowing they wouldn’t kill people, they would seek to trap them in their own loneliness. There is an odd mismatch here though, if the ghosts are lonely, wouldn’t they want more ghosts even if their domain was overflowing? Also half the victims of the ghosts kill themselves and then leave a black smudge while the other half that doesn’t kill themself just fade into a black smudge anyway. Their fate appears the same either way. Perhaps that is a deliberate point, isolation is the same as death.
The two protagonists seem to have the most resistance to the curse of Loneliness. Ryosuke is himself a loner, but it doesn’t seem to bother him that much. He mentions that he wants to live forever at some point, so despite his isolation he has a resolve to keep going. Michi by comparison is very social and seems to care deeply about all her friends. Her desire to keep going seems at it’s lowest at the start of the final act but once she meets Ryosuke her resolve for survival returns. It is interesting then to consider the pairs final fate. Worse for one that the other but sad for both of them.
Conclusion
Before I give my score for this, I want to talk briefly about the American version. The reason that version fell flat was because it switched the focus from loneliness to the internet/signal side of things and with that switch tried to turn it into a fairly generic horror film. The idea of ghosts coming through the internet isn’t a bad one to explore (Indeed for a more fun version of that check out “Nekrotronic” from 2018), but it missed the point of this particular story. That the US wasn’t at the time having the same issues as Japan did with it’s Hikikomori and that the phenomenon wasn’t really known outside Japan at that time likely factored into missing the point. But enough about the remake.
Overall, while the film drags a little the way it digs deep into everyone’s fear of loneliness makes for a great psychological horror and the ghosts themselves present in forms that manage to to be disturbing while not requiring them to really do much. The talking black smudges and the people on the computer screens also manage to be very creepy. Basically the horror aspects are strong here despite a near complete lack of gore or violence (Suicides aside). Of all the films I’ve seen over this October this one actually came closest to disturbing me. This is a strong 7/10 and I think the front runner of the season. That is what you call finishing strong.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 7 out of 10.
I’m going to have at least a week off reviews now after doing 31 in a row. But November is “Noirvember” so expect at a few Film Noir reviews out later in the month. Till then, Happy Halloween!
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