Loft

If Kairo (Pulse) got my interest piqued towards Kiyoshi Kurosawa's works of horror, a genuine atmospheric piece which truly spooked me, then Loft is that perennial two steps backwards, falling into the curse I find permeating into many Asian horror movies of late, of standard clichés and eliciting guffaws from moments which translate into unwanted comedy.

Loft had the ingredients for a potential spook fest, and it was setup rightly so. You have a writer Reiko, (which seems to be the occupation of choice for spirits to haunt) experiencing weird bodily phenomenon of spewing black, gooey mud, and facing a writer's block, requests her editor to help her relocate to a nice quiet place (read: huge house in the middle of nowhere, with opportunities for things to go bump). Throw in an anthropologist whose latest project involves preserving a recently found mummy - a taciturn man living next door, and you have something interesting set up, together with side show characters for red herring purposes.

Alas, despite the usual craftsmanship of Kurosawa in setting up the mood, Loft seemed to present itself like a one trick pony. It beats about the bush, exposing a lack of control with material and suggests cluelessness, and runs out of ideas in moving the story ahead. You'd come to expect certain plot twists, and characters with their ulterior motives, and is plagued by extremely bad editing, which I do not understand how it passed even the basics of quality control. It limps towards the end, and when it finally showed signs of redemption, it shoots itself in the foot with an extremely cheesy ending, bad dialogue which is amazingly spouted by the cast with gusto, and the sudden decision to make this a cheap hokey romance.

Plagued by inconsistencies and bad effects at one point in time (someone should outlaw superimposed backgrounds in those driving shots - go on location for heaven's sake), the movie looks and develops as if it was an amateur at the helm. I suppose I could come up with something of this quality, and for it to be in the filmography of Kurosawa, it is indeed a nasty shock.

All in all, a very dismal effort from the writer-director, one which seemed to be a very rushed effort on the themes of dreams and delusions, coupled with bad one-dimensional acting (either the I'm-so-scared or I'm-so-anal look). Loft is a bad nightmare indeed. Save your money, rent it at the most.

Normally I like Asian horror movies. That said, "Loft" was just a complete mess. While the preposition sounds interesting (writer with blockade in a big house out in the nothing with a somewhat weird anthropologist as a neighbour whose job is to conserve a mummy), mostly everything else is either confusing or pointless.

The movie takes a whopping six minutes including credits to introduce the main role, her problems and the "solution" that is her publisher selling her a house out in the country. I was quite baffled how fast this movie went through with these things. And for me that was the main problem of the movie: It is just confusing for most of the time. Rather often I took half of a scene to understand what time this scene is taking place in, where I am and what's going on. On the other hand the movie takes surprisingly much time to show scenes that don't make any sense afterwards. What is left is a huge mess of incoherently slapped together scenes without not much more than the basic premise holding them together.

This is a movie that requires a certain mood. It is dark, morbid, reluctant to show more than you need, very silent at times, very slow developing, it has enough predictability not to give you goosebumps... and that sums it up. what made me give it an average vote wasn't necessarily the movie, but the trailer. the movie was bearable, quite beautiful. about the trailer... then well, it could have been worse than that, with that pop song going through the middle made it look like a pastiche. I hate it how a bad trailer can set the mood wrong for such a serious movie. I know better when to criticize and when to shut up, but this had to be spilled.

the dialogue isn't complicated. it has a few memorable lines, but they are all contextually related, like the one that says I'll throw everything but you. it seeps with silence, hatred, regret and misunderstanding.

I finally got around to watching Loft, after a year of owning the DVD If you find a copy, play it loud because the sound really makes the movie. The director is Kiyoshi Kurosawa and I'm a huge fan of his work. His films are just so often unable to be defined in one genre, or ANY genre for that matter. The first 2 thirds of the film are filled with so many haunting and hypnotic scenes. It is macabre and yet beautiful. I couldn't look away and just sat there glued to the TV, breathing shallowly like only Kiyoshi Kurosawa can make me do.

His films have a pace that makes drying paint seem like an adventure sport. But what that means is that every shot of the film is studying something or someone, or something that isn't even there. As with all of his films that I haveseen, in Loft I felt a kind of voyeuristic feeling, like I was there in the scene too. It is hard to describe, but this quality is clearly what alienates some people. What some viewers considere painfully boring, had me on the edge of my seat until the last frame. Watching with empathy, projecting yourself into the shoes of the characters, the film's real depth come to the fold.

And sound really does make all this live, or quite often the lack of sound. Silence is one of the scariest things you can ever hear, as paradoxical as that seems. Kurosawa perhaps knows just how unusual silence actually is in our lives and when it occurs in his films, the effect is haunting. And it also the abruptness of sound in his films. A crescendo of tension in the audio can just suddenly cut off into silence with a change of scene or angle. In many ways it is subtle sound design like this that keeps the viewer on edge and off guard.

Visually, no KK film would be complete with out decrepit buildings in which to fill with shadows, but also this film is incredibly green, being set in a forest. So much of the film isn't in the dark but that doesn't seem to make a difference. The beauty of a KK suspense piece is that it knows that noises and the dark are just cheap thrills. A horror film doesn't need to have them to get under your skin and into your mind, and Loft certainly did that for me.

Is it scary? Well if you are of very sensitive disposition. I would say that it is atmospheric, mesmerising and macabre; and ends up in a place quite different to where it starts out. It is a difficult film to classify and probably because it was made by KK. The film is full of his various trademarks, including awkward tonal shifts mid movie, and manipulation of perception and reality, but it works, though you might not think so at first.

Loft is a film that left with me with the sensation that what I had just witnessed was so much more than what I had managed to surmise from it. It had the aftertaste of something allegorical, that had me feeling that I had understood the message even though I couldn't put into words what it was. It is a film that expects a lot from the viewer, however, if you put in the effort and just let the film draw you along into its dark and twisted logic, Loft is a very rewarding film.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa once said that the ghosts in his films are very Japanese, in that they often don't do anything. Just the fact that they are in these people's lives is horrible enough.

No living director anywhere can build creeping, gnawing, raw nerve anticipatory tension like Kurosawa. Aside from that? Well, it's a mixed bag. His new film, English title "Loft", twists slowly on your skin early on, digging deeper and deeper. And then it sort of just stops. The shallow breathed fear that he creates, having you flinch at every movement in delicious tension (What's that! Oh, it's a TV. Wait! What's THAT! Oh, just a shadow) is unique. His mastery of composition in the frame, of scene, setting, character movement, sound, are unparalleled. And in this he sets himself up. There would have to be one hell of a harrowing finale to bring it all to a satisfying conclusion. As it is, "Loft" creeps up on you, hypnotizing you in fear; and then it just waits a while, and creeps back away. Not to say that the (lengthy) conclusion is poor, in any other movie it would be great. He twists several cliché horror staples in unique ways, and even finds some delirious humor. But it just doesn't work well enough. You almost feel the plot stumble and come close to falling. Kurosawa's brilliance with horror is that he does not scare you with sudden movements, grotesque images and stunts. He creates dread, primal and powerful. His horror slowly leans over your shoulder until it stares you in the eye. Unfortunately, in "Loft", the audience wins the staring contest.