Chime

Keeping its secrets guarded and living off the shocks of its knife-edge turns, Chime sees Kiyoshi Kurosawa covering more than familiar ground with plenty of desolate moodscapes, recognisable for anyone with even a cursory knowledge of his past output. However, there is something particularly chilling about the oppressive mundanity here, a mundanity to which Koichi Furuya's digital cinematography adds another layer of dread. It's a dreary madness that slowly begins seeping into the life of its character. Despite its skeletal form and brief runtime, the film ends on a fascinating rupture; the previously ambient evil becoming tangible shifts, terrifyingly, within the realm of possibility and the suggestion of this curse being made concrete becomes overbearing. Relishing in the awful psychological residues of violence while suggesting a lucid dream, the kind of fragmented nightmare you are grateful to wake up from but just as terrified to leave so unresolved.

Chime: Japanese horror film which is lean and mean, clocks in at 45 minutes. Matsuoka is a teacher at a cookery school, gets some oddball students, they're just amateurs, So he's not that shocked when a student, Tashiro complains about hearing a chime noise. But Tashiro goes on to say that half of his brain is a machine and fatally stabs himself in the neck with a cleaver to display his brain. Then Matsuoka starts to hear the chime and tragic circumstances ensue. Things are in free fall, the chime gets louder, more people hear and react violently. Matsuoka's family, an incompetent detective, Matsuoka's attempts to get a job as a chef all add to a sense of strangeness. It's also implied that Matsuoka has committed other crimes. You'll mull this film over long after the credits toll. Maybe it should have been longer. Written and Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. 7.5/10.

Renowned Japanese horror filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns with a distinctive and chilling addition to the genre. The story centers on Matsuoka, a former chef who conducts cooking classes while he seeks new employment. One day, a student voices his distress over an inexplicable sound that he cannot escape, which appears to be altering him internally, leading to a loss of self-control and even violent outbursts. The particularly unsettling aspect of this noise is its ability to propagate from one individual to another without any forewarning, rendering each moment of the film fraught with unpredictability and tension.

In a mere 45 minutes, Kurosawa employs a myriad of techniques from his extensive repertoire, crafting a film that achieves a level of creepiness and intensity in just a few scenes that surpasses the efforts of many horror films released this year.

"Chime" does not conform to the typical jump-scare format; rather, it evokes a lingering sense of dread that may resurface days later, leaving viewers with an unsettling image from the film etched in their minds. Watch this film of a filmmaker that's at the top of his game!

I thought I'd give it a try. A 6.8 on the IMDB is pretty good for a horror movie, and I am a vivid Horror fan, but boy was I duped! It started OK. A Japanese town is shown in quite a depressive looking view. But then...... a knive, and another knive, and lots of cans in plastic bags. Why are there so many cans in plastic bags? I just didn't get it. Did I miss the story somewhere. The movie is 45 minutes, so is the story in the missing minutes. What happened? Why. A teacher who hears a noise, am I deaf. What noise. What the f.... did happen in this movie. Yes, a beautiful tree outside the building. Oh that's the end....what happened. What was I watching?

Best part here: It's only 45 minutes. I can't even imagine the horror and the pain i would face if it was longer. And i don't mean, in a good way. Look, i respect Asian horror and there are some great movies. Of course, there are some great movies overall in which some things were unexplained. Some times, ambiguity is even necessary, all the mysteries don't need to be solved.

But, this was too much. This is so cryptic and enigmatic that made me don't care at all, i mean, who are those people and why they suffer? Why should i invest? I am not even sure it's cryptic, maybe there is nothing beneath the surface, maybe it's just a mess, this is too random to be called an enigma.

I gave it 5 stars because it's well acted and well directed. Visually, it's good, i can't rate lower a film when so many aspects of film making are above average.

But, that's it.