(2006)
Dir - Satoshi Kon
Overall: GOOD
Emerging nine years later yet serving as a thematic cousin to his debut Perfect Blue, Paprika is another stellar exploration of mind-bending reality from filmmaker Satoshi Kon. His final theatrical work to be completed before his untimely death four years later from prostate cancer, Kon's adaptation of Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel is more condensed yet still fiercely committed to depicting an expanding dreamscape that gradually enters into the real world. The idea of sci-fi technology allowing for people to record and study dreams is nothing new in fiction, but the animated form here affords Kon and his expert team of illustrators the chance to go hog-wild with captivating visuals, tripping out an already challenging story that explores duality and the nature of our fantasy realms. It is no accident that the "real world" is increasingly depicted in a way that is indistinguishable from the "dream world" as character's improbable anatomy with each other is already established early on, making everyone's later transformation into god-like giants, kaiju-styled robots, and cinematic alter egos just as distorted. It opens more doors than it conventionally closes, but it is a captivating ride that bares future viewings to try and unlock.
(2007)
Dir - Ataru Oikawa
Overall: MEH
Filmmaker Ataru Oikawa stuck with more J-horror immediately following his back-to-back Tomie installments, (Tomie: Beginning and Tomie: Revenge respectfully), with author Kei Ōishi's adaptation Apartment 1303; a movie that immediately brings to mind Hideo Nakata's Dark Water from five years earlier. Yet another haunted high-rise is on display, this one being a luxury complex with a clean, functional pool for victims to continuously fall into under dubious circumstances that apparently no police force member has been curious enough to do anything about until now. Oikawa mostly sticks with a slow boil atmosphere, letting large portions go by with no incidental music which wonderfully showcase a fine performance from Noriko Nakagoshi who is stuck grieving her dead sister, uncovering said sister's "suicide", and also being traumatized by her even more grief-stricken mother who openly despises her. Some of the freaky bits are effective, but the story relies on too many familiar scare tactics and tropes to continually impress, plus it overstays its welcome and could afford a trimmed running time.
(2009)
Dir - Takashi Shimizu
Overall: MEH
For his follow-up to the second American popcorn installment in the Ju-On series with The Grudge 2, director Takashi Shimizu chose to shoot and set a slow-burn, topsy-turvy nightmare at Fuji-Q High Land's "Labyrinth of Horrors" haunted house attraction. The decision was also made to make the resulting The Shock Labyrinth, (Senritsu meikyû 3D), a 3-D experience, one whose poor CGI effects are more distracting than unsettling. More of an issue though is the movie's cumbersome pacing and lack of narrative agency. Things begin ambiguous enough and the hook of a long lost friend showing up ten years later to get the story moving is intriguing only to a point as things eventually get stuck in the mud with the small crop of characters bouncing between both time lines and supernaturally arbitrary realities. The presentation is appropriately full of creepy window dressing; floating stuffed bunnies, ghostly children, twitchy mannequins that look straight out of Silent Hill, plus endless corridors and barren rooms that seem as if evil entities have been lurking in the shadows there for decades. It becomes a chore to sit through though, painfully monotonous with plot revelations coming too far and few between, as well as being too murky when they do arrive.
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