Movie Appraisal: Detention (2011)

Detention, directed by Joseph Kahn, whose only other directing credit is Torque, is an absolutely enjoyable movie. While quick-paced, it's also memorable and really fun. I probably didn't catch half of what happened in this movie just because of the breakneck speed of the film, the dialogue, and the characters. It almost seems to be made for the ADD generation while having references to the nineties literally throughout the movie. It's odd, and my awkwardness at describing it is probably already showing.

I have no idea how to talk about it, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to spoil it. It's a horror comedy, although it's also fairly light on most of the horror and pretty heavy on most of the comedy. Strangely, although I do not tend to like comedies, I really found this one guffaw kinds of funny. The witty banter along with references, and the characters giving a joke every thirty seconds made this movie really enjoyable to just watch. I had heard about the synopsis and a bit about the movie in general, and I knew I needed to watch it. It's definitely an oddball movie, but it so happens to fall right under what I love in movies. I guess I could call it the horror-comedy version of Donnie Darko mixed with The Breakfast Club (to a point). And it certainly feels as good as either of those movies.

I don't really want to spoil the plot. Let's just say it's odd, almost nonsensical, and really fun. The actors look like they're having a blast. They certainly make the characters into something memorable at the very least. The weirdness of the film mixed with everything else about it makes this a much watch movie if you've ever agreed with me on some of my more outlandish movie likes. I can't really even think of another movie like this one.

I recommend this almost more than any other movie. It's really odd, and I think it will be a love it or hate it kind of film for almost everybody. I loved it, but I can totally understand someone disliking it. I do have a hard time really calling it a "horror" movie, but it does have gore and horror elements in it, and all of them work really well although most of them are also disregarded. The movie- it almost feels like one of those teenage parody movies being put out a few years ago, something like Not Another Teen Movie or whatever. Not that I've really seen movies like that, but just watching the previews, that's what this movie almost acts like. And that might seem like a turn-off, but it does that in a way that actually works.

I'm so scattered about this film. I have no idea what to talk about. If I were having a conversation with you, I'd be trying to say three different things about this movie at once. It has so much density and so many elements in it that I find it very difficult to adequately talk about everything. I love the background moments, things that happen completely in the background that have plot relevance, but are not focused on. On love the adherence to foreshadowing, which seems to be a near-constant thing in this film. The continuity seems like it was a major consideration throughout the movie.

When I watch this film again, I may write a bit more about it. I think this might be a movie that needs multiple viewings to really get everything going on. I may not be giving you much, but this is a really fun movie and really worth watching. Yeah. I think that's all I have to say about it now.

Movie Appraisal: The Sylvian Experiments (Kyofu) (Dread) (恐怖) (2010)

What the hell did I just watch?

I guess I should explain. If- Well, it's impossible to explain, but I'll try to say what I saw on screen. This is the most convoluted and confusing movie I've seen since Dreamland, and both share that whole science and ghost premise that makes both even more confusing. I guess I'll try to come up with an interpretation, but I seriously cannot promise anything.

The Sylvian Experiments is the final movie of the J-Horror Theater experience. (Yes, I'm reviewing all of these movies heavily out of order.) It is one of the stranger movies I've reviewed on this blog. It's gory at times, boring to the point of nearly putting me to sleep at other times, and ultimately has no coherent plot at all. I honestly have no idea if what I just watched meant something or if it was just an odd little movies for reasons unknown.

Where do I even start? I guess at the beginning. The movie goes in and out of the past, present, and future constantly, making it very difficult to follow. The movie starts with a middle-aged couple watching some neurological experiments that may let researchers see something beyond the living world. Their children, two daughters, come to them while they are watching and are very upset by the whole thing. Years later, a young woman named Miyuki, one of the daughters from the beginning of the movie agrees with four other people to commit suicide in a van. So, it's a suicide pact. Yeah. So, before we even have a moment to learn about her character she is already ready to kill herself. Kind of a bad start. We never learn why she wants to do such a thing, just that that's what she's decided to do.

Anyway, she disappears and ends up in her mother's lab where she and three of the others (one of the guys was a plant to capture them) are used in the same experiments from the movie at the beginning of the film. Their heads are cut open in some fairly gruesome scenes, and little sci-fi metal machines are inserted into their brains. Two of them die. Another is a virgin (which is important for some reason although we're never told why). Miyuki and the virgin, Rieko, disappear somehow from the underground hospital thing and end up being like ghosts, I think.

Meanwhile, Miyuki's sister, Kaori, has come to try to find her sister. She stays in her Miyuki's apartment, meets her boyfriend (eventually sleeping with him), and works kinda-sorta with a detective to find her. Kaori kind of becomes the central character in the movie, but her character is so flat and uninteresting that it is very difficult to relate with her. She does what she is told, never really fights anything, and is altogether a very weak character easily influenced by the other characters. While throughout most of the movie she is the point of view character, she ironically never shows a point of view herself.

The movie has some downright comical moments with the mother's two helpers and the boyfriend who was the mother's plant as well. Kaori is so ineffectual that it becomes a chore to watch her on screen. Rieko becomes virgin-pregnant with the afterlife itself. (I told you, this movie is freaking weird.) The detective is killed, there is a CGI afterlife light fog thing that kills all the "antagonists" (even though they barely did anything wrong), and... well, I'll get to the ending in a minute.

I just want to say that these four people who wanted to commit suicide wanted to die. Not to be a creepy and crazy person here, but they wanted to die. That's established. So, no, getting semi-tortured and experimented on isn't a good thing, but they wanted to die. So, why should I feel sympathy for them? I guess that's my ultimate point here without getting into any strange euthanasia principles.

Well, the movie ends in a fairly bogus way. I've liked this kind of ending in other movies, but it kind of defeats the whole purpose of the movie here. Yes, it turns out that in the end, Miyuki had probably died in the van with the other four. Although, the original plant in the van had a head wound, which seems suspicious and maybe not altogether a sign of suicide. So, I guess there could have been something there? I have no idea. I simply do not know what was meant by that. The detective is alive again, so that kind of says that nothing past their attempted suicides in the van in the beginning of the movie really happened.

But them Kaori's there at the end. How can she be there when we've actually really never seen the real her in the movie? Are we supposed to feel sympathy for a character we've never known before? I don't know. I figured the whole purpose of this movie was to pit science against nature and show that nature always wins. But no, it isn't. I've seen similar plots in Jacob's Ladder and Stay, done much better and much more effectively. The setup and pay-off in those films actually worked, with the whole premise of those movies being the ability for the character who are dying to come to terms with their lives, their mistakes, their guilt, and their deaths. That makes those movies beautiful, but makes this one a jumble. While it has some of those elements, they're not the focus of the movie.

Yes, there are certainly things that could be interpreted as a death dream. The mother is both antagonistic and a true scientist. She never does anything truly evil even if she is completely unethical. She's portrayed much more as a purveyor of science than as a monster. Which, if Miyuki's memories of her mother is correct, she might very well be cold, distant, and more interested in her work than her family. Kaori is portrayed as weak, ineffectual, and easily manipulated. She sleeps with Miyuki's boyfriend, which could be a critical thought about the two of them. Miyuki was more than likely unhappy with her relationship with both of them, and the interpretation of both of them breaking her trust seems like a reasonable thought for her to have, especially in a depressed and dying state of mind. memories of an old house and her apartment would also fit, being the places she would have remembered very well.

But there are so many things that don't fit with the premise of this being a death-dream. Why the comedic antics of the mother's helpers? Why the Rieko being afterlife pregnant? These elements do not work into the plot very well. I guess that's all I can really say.

I think some people have a pretty vitriolic feeling about this movie. I mostly find it an interesting failure. I liked the beginning and ending, but the middle felt overlong and tiring. It seriously almost put me to sleep. I was nodding off. The CGI was garbage, but the whole afterlife plot was interesting with the ending of the film making some sense even if it was not well set up earlier in the movie. The acting was pretty decent, and the filming of scenes was fine. I didn't really see any big issues with those things.

I didn't like the music, finding it distracting at times. The plot is dense, convoluted, and nonsensical at times. It really needed somebody to come along and say something about it. The tone of the film is everywhere, and I guess I was expecting a much different movie. It was bad per se, but it certainly wasn't good either. It's not scary either, so if you really want a scary movie, this isn't it. Again the comparison to Dreamland holds up pretty well. There are fairly similar problems in both. I think I like that movie more, but only because that one is seriously unique in terms of literally everything about it.

I can't recommend this movie to watch. It is a mess of a film that makes little to no sense at times. It had it's interesting moments, but ultimately fails the coherency test.

Movie Appraisal: Premonition (Yogen) (予言) (2004)

I love horror movies because of what they can do when they are spot on. A good horror movie won't just scare you, it will make you a wreck of a person. Once you get into a horror movie, really experience it, it can become a transcendent incident unto itself. That probably makes no sense. Let me put it this way: if a good horror movie can scare you, a great one will be a lingering fear within you for the rest of your life. You will think back on it as things happen in your daily life. It will become a part of you just as easily as the bad or mediocre horror movies are forgotten memories, only dredged up if you actively think about that certain movie.

Yogen, or Premonition to us English speakers, is such a movie. I don't even have words for what i just watched. I mean, yes, I'll write down a ton of words, but none of them will be a meaningful as my reactions as I watched this movie. Very few movies make me react viscerally to them. I can only tick off a few: Possession from 1981, Jacob's Ladder, 1408,  and that's about it. I mean, I'm sure there are a couple of others that I'm simply not remembering, but this movie... this movie was brilliant in every sense of the word.

It was not shot as a horror movie, and with most of the film being setup, it had very few moments of actual horror. But when those moments popped up it certainly hit me in a very visceral way. I was shocked at some of the things that happen in this movie, and not simply jump-scare shocked, but truly horrified at what happens. It is a slow-burn of a movie, even at only about an hour-and-a-half long. It feels like a much longer film.

As I said before, most of the movie is setup. It establishes the rules of this movie universe. It sets up the whole idea of fate, and that some people seem to be "gifted" to see what could happen in the future, or in this case, who will die and how. And these are not peaceful deaths either, but deaths of a violent and often very sudden nature. While we see very little of the actual deaths and dying, the ones that we do get to see are awful, really be benchmarks in how to film a death in a horror movie.

But would I even call this a horror movie? I was certainly shocked and horrified, but horror doesn't rightly describe this film. It is a film about terror, about trying to understand the workings of the universe and being completely unable to do so in any meaningful way. It is a film that shockingly states that there is very little we can do against the universe, and in the end we can only truly somewhat control our own fate and nothing else.

The movie is about a man, an overworked, very stressed out man named Hideki, who needs to send an email to his work, but that decision ultimately leads to his daughter being killed in a car accident. And that accident is so sudden that it literally shocked me out of my seat. His life turns into a mess. He loses, or gives up, his wife. And his whole demeanor changes. It doesn't change because his daughter dies though. It changes because he sees, or thinks he sees, a newspaper article concerning her death before she dies. He does nothing, and his guilt is what drives a wedge between his wife and himself, and basically everybody else as well.

Over time he starts seeing more of these newspapers around, foretelling deaths and terrible things. And he continues to do nothing about it. He doesn't try to change anything.He simply gets freaked out and doesn't want to deal with it. Then, when he sees a student of his in his newspaper of fate, getting stabbed to death, he tries to get involved, only to be too late to save her.

The movie moves on as we see his ex-wife, Ayaka, researching the phenomena he has been experiencing to try to grasp what is actually going on. Eventually, as she finds a psychic photograph of Hideki taken by a psychic person she had been working with who seemed to have died, possibly violently? It's never really shown how or why. Anyway, she starts to believe him, tries to talk with him, and eventually does. They team up to try to solve the mystery of what's happening only to find a great deal more than they would have expected.

It is a movie that goes through many twists and turns. Those who can see the future as he does are cursed. Either they go mad and die if they do not help the people in the newspapers out or they blacken and shrivel away like some sort of living spectre if they do warn those people and save their lives. So, it's a no-win situation. Hideki has chosen up to this point to do nothing, but when his ex-wife, whom he has become close to again, is mentioned dying in an article about a train derailment, he chooses to save her, thus damning himself. He changes her fate and that changes his as well.

The end of the movie is a cerebral turn that jumps from one memory to another. It is dreamlike, and called Hell by another character who is experiencing it... or who has. It's unclear exactly how much of it is real or really happening. This is the most terrifying and upsetting part of the movie, and the part that will probably be make or break for most people. It never seems to "really" be happening, but at the same time it is a part of the movie, and the most important part at that. I connected with the characters, really seeing them as beautiful pieces put into this film. They work well, and the ending works well because that added effort was put into making them as good as possible.

Anyway, in the end, Hideki chooses to sacrifice himself so that both his daughter and wife will live. And it is shown that that is his choice, but also somewhat his fate. The psychic picture of him was of his death photograph in the newspaper at the end of the movie that his daughter sees. So, how much of the end of the movie was his choice and how much was his fate is certainly up in the air, at least to me.

I don't really know what else to say. The movie is amazing from beginning to end. The music is wonderful when it actually happens. The filmography is well done. The acting is brilliant and believable with the actors being one of the biggest highlights of the viewing experience. The plot is well done, based on a manga "Kyoufu Shinbun" ("Newspaper of Terror) by Jiro Tsunoda published in 1973, and is certainly the best part of the film, so much so that... I just have no other words for it.

As for the director Norio Tusuruta, I had reviewed one of his other movies last year in fact. I did not like Kakashi very much and subsequently kind of eviscerated the movie for being a wishy-washy mess. Junji Ito films sadly tend to have that quality about them. This movie though, with its genuinely great script, great acting, great production quality, and great cinematography works on every level that Kakashi didn't. So much so that I basically want to apologize to Norio (even though I said I liked the directing of Kakashi) because this effort shows true quality that I have huge amounts of respect for.

This movie is also the second movie made in the J-Horror Theater series of movies, and that might be why the production values are so good.

Do I recommend this movie? Yes. Hell yes. Go see this movie whether or not you like Japanese horror. It is both a great movie and a great and viscerally upsetting horror movie. It deserves to be both watched and praised.

Also, since this is the first movie of the six J-Horror Theater movies that I've seen, and since it was so good, I've decided to check out the others in the series as well. Hopefully they keep up the quality.