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: Retribution (Sakebi) (叫) (Scream) (Shriek) (2006)

Well, that was a movie I did not enjoy. While it is the fourth movie in the J-Horror Theater series of movies, and it is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, it just does not do enough to be interesting. I was quite fond of 2001's Kairo but this movie just does not deliver on many of the same fronts that other better horror movies have. I found this movie to be very slow, something I usually like, but also just kind of odd in places. It was so slow as to become very dry and somewhat boring, and it never really did anything. The shots were sterile, the plot was fairly dull and predictable, and the acting, something I usually praise, was subpar.

The confusing plot did not help this film. And it's not as if the plot isn't spelled out either, but the confusion is more about why everything is happening the way it does. Why does the lady in red's ghost seem so powerful? She's so powerful that she can bring about the deaths of everyone? I mean, that's the point, right? That's ridiculous. I know it's also the ending, but even before that, I found little about this movie to like.

Most of the characters do not work for me. They never feel real or emotional. They never feel like people. They feel like set-pieces and window-dressing. The acting made me bored out of my skull as well. I'm not looking for overly complex screaming and emotional acting, but there has to be something more than what was given. The shots of the actors were so sterile and separate from the movie as well that I found it very hard to relate to those characters. It was incredibly disappointing because I went into this movie with a great deal of hope for something compelling.

Anyway, the plot is basically about a detective following a murder case (and eventually a string of murder cases) that involves drowning in sea water. It is very procedural, trying to find the suspect, and the detective being his own prime suspect for a while, which just kind of goes nowhere and is really dumb. He eventually starts seeing what he thinks is the murdered girl's ghost, but it isn't. It's just another girl in a red dress who happens to be a ghost. It just feels very silly and very uninteresting.

The movie is never scary. The red dress ghost is simply kind of goofy looking. She never looks like she belongs in a single scene. It doesn't work, whatever they did in the shooting of this film, and it makes the whole premise not only ridiculous but really bland as well. You can tell that they wanted to create a new horror icon about a creepy girl, but a ninety pound young woman will never be scary, okay? Horror movies, do you understand that? Young women are not scary by themselves just staring or saying weird things. You have to have more than that. Give me some tension or show me less or something.

I simply want to sigh and stop talking about this movie. I did not enjoy it in the slightest. I think others might, but for me the plot and the premise were too silly for me to take seriously. And without any scares this is hardly a horror movie. I've seen others place it in a mystery movie category, but even that's not right because so much of this movie isn't mystery so much as "Oh, we forgot to tell you major plot points!" I mean, the detective's girlfriend just happened to be murdered six months previous despite her having appeared in three-quarters of the movie seemingly perfectly fine. Why even do that? It just makes the whole thing needlessly complex. I get that the whole movie is basically an apocalyptic scenario over collective guilt or whatever, but it's so badly portrayed. It doesn't work on so many levels. And while I tend to like slow-burning horror, this movie has so many convenient excuses for plot that it bordered on actual bad plot writing.

I think many people might enjoy this one, but I certainly did not. I wholly do not recommend this movie, and would actively tell people to avoid it. There are some decent scenes here and there, but nothing interesting enough to recommend the whole movie. The music (and lack thereof at times) is fairly well done. And... I guess I really did like one scene, when the detective's partner disappears or is dragged into a bowl of water. It was well done. And it was perhaps the only scene that was.

It's disappointing to me because I found Kairo so compelling. It was a movie I remembered for years and years, and this movie will go down in my mind and my review as a forgettable and jumbled mess.

Movie Appraisal: Long Dream (Nagai yume) (長い夢) (2000)

Well, I just watched this interesting, obscure little television movie based off of a Junji Ito manga. Yes, another one of those.While I haven't done a movie based off of Junji Ito's work in a while, I am always looking to find some. It's a weird fascination I have with these movies and the quality (or lack thereof) within them. While most of these movies have been basically horrid, there has been a great deal of room for these to be somewhat quality productions. Anyway, while I truly do like Junji Ito's manga, I am not so fond of the movies surrounding his stuff. They're usually all kinds of bad. But... but this one, Long Dream, is an exception with some caveats.

First off, this is a surprisingly good adaptation of the manga of the same name. The stories are both really good, and the mimicking of make-up and effects actually is incredibly well done, something I was not at all expecting. The facial details of those who have undergone the titular long dream for long periods of time are spot on with the manga, so much so that I was incredibly impressed, especially seeing this had to have had a television movie budget considering the quality of filming.

The quality is all over the place. It's never scary, but does feel interesting throughout. The shots are mostly very simple, and the camera used is obviously not the best one available. The sound effects are also very loud at times, so loud as to be distracting. And the acting ranges from subtle and well done to over-the-top and incredibly hammy. So, the tone is really inconsistent.

The adaptation is mostly very faithful to the manga, but since the story of the manga ends about halfway through this movie, about a half hour of original material is added. This mostly involves Dr. Kuroda's dead girlfriend Kana. It's done decently, but doesn't really fit into the overall tone. The only true "dream" shots involve Kana as well, making those shots almost artistic compared to the rest of the film.

Mokuoda, the man who initially has the long dreams (which are exactly as they sound, dreams that sometimes are centuries long), is fairly well done as well, with a good performance. The gravity of the dreams truly seems to weigh him down. I enjoyed watching him undergo the stressful worries of coming to terms with his inevitable fate of dreaming an eternal dream.

Mami, the woman who is exposed to the brain crystals of Mokuoda one he has withered into dust, is kind of a nonentity. She can scream all right, I guess, but her character is largely forgotten int he background of the more original content with the two doctors. I kind of wish I would have seen her in make-up as well, maybe undergoing the same stresses that Mokuoda went through, but no. Her story just kind of peters out eventually.

The doctors, Yamauchi and Kuroda, are really the centerpieces of the movie. Yamauchi especially acts incredibly well. He is the subtle actor I was hinting at above. Kuroda is the more over-the-top one. They simultaneously make the plot less interesting and move it along. I'm much less interested in their original stories of falling in love with patients or whatever and much more interested in the long dreamers. That whole concept is truly fascinating to me, which is why I liked the original, very short, manga story.

I will say that if you watch about a half hour of this movie, until it is revealed that Dr. Kuroda has injected Mami with Mokuoda's brain crystals and she has begun the long dream process, you will probably be completely satisfied, fan of Junji Ito or not. Again, it's nothing truly special, but it works as an interesting Twilight Zone type of plot. The second half hour just adds a lot of uninteresting and somewhat boring material. And the ending is simply silly. And you will probably see it coming from a mile away as well.

I can't really recommend this movie. It's simply not scary, and at only less than an hour long, it's really not worth the effort to track down. Reading the manga is a much better use of your time and energy. While I think it's perfectly serviceable as a kind of silly horror movie, it also doesn't really do anything interesting or new besides the plot. Hell, I found myself bored out of my mind for most of the second half of the movie. And the gore of the movie is only in the second half. Why it's there, I don't know, but it would have been better if it had been left out.

While it's one of the better adaptations of Junji Ito's works, it's only average at best.