Tôkyô densetsu: ugomeku machi no kyôki

I've just watched the DVD of this film. It ranks as one of the most awful films I've seen over recent years. The look of the film is dreadful - if you gave someone a cheap video camera and told them to film in a high-rise block of flats with a bunch of amateur actors, then you get some idea of what this film delivers. I don't think there was a sound man either - in an early office scene they were clearly using the mike on the camera - horrible echoes. But it's the pace of the film that really gets to you. It's so slow. No it's very slow. It's like a sloth on Valium. If you play the DVD at 16x then it becomes watchable. It's a remarkable thing that this film feels like its been going on for hours, when in fact the credits roll after only 75 minutes. Avoid at all costs. This film is complete pants.

Tokyo Psycho is a very atmospheric telling of recent events involving the "Otaku" murders in Tokyo, Japan. It benefits from fine performances and chilling set pieces, but most of all from an almost medical sparseness. The cinematography takes full advantage of the very bare set design, which includes a lot of concrete and wood to create a claustrophobic intensity that director Oikawa exploits to maximum effect. I haven't seen a film with such an insidious use of music (which is to say almost none) since Todd Browning's Dracula, and yet the ambient noises that create a sonic background score are both sublime and disturbing, much like the film itself. The story follows a a pretty, young designer who is receiving obsessive love letters from an unknown admirer who she may or may not know. These letters quickly escalate to include body parts and threats, and the author of these valentines quickly becomes her assailant. The use of the DV video format makes the viewer feel like a voyeur to the terrors that unfold, and invokes a David Lynchian atmosphere of dread and suffocation while utilizing mainly daylight locations. In many ways the mood of the film is acid-trippy with sudden bursts of violence & tenderness in places where each is least expected. This is not a film for the "Boo!" crowd, as the disturbing nature of the unfolding narrative is creepier than it is scary, but this serves to indelibly imprint that mood and theme on the viewers psyche for weeks after viewing. Recommended.

I was suckered in by the DVD movie cover and had hoped to see a movie with more brutality or at least just a movie with a proper storyline.

"Tokyo Psycho" (aka "Tôkyô densetsu: ugomeku machi no kyôki") is about Yumiko who is stalked by an unknown person, sending her strange letters and macabre photos. As the walls close in on Yumiko, she finds herself trapped in a bizarre and twisted game.

The storyline was so mundane and stereotypical that it was boring beyond comprehension, and it was equally predictable as it was boring.

The acting in "Tokyo Psyhco" was adequate, just don't expect to be dazzled by anything extraordinary. But not even the adequate acting could do anything to lift up the storyline in any way.

This was definitely not one of the brightest moments in Japanese cinema, and it was an ordeal to sit through the movie to the very end. If you manage to sit through the entire movie, it will be bagged, tagged and put on the movie shelf never to be watched again.

OK, so I'll admit that this isn't the best movie ever made, but some of the other comments here are a touch harsh. Tokyo Psycho isn't supposed to be Ju-On or Ringu. This is a cool ass, low budget j-horror flick. And as a trashy, freak out, straight to video (or DVD, or whatever they call it these days) exploitation flick it totally works. I dug the washed out, stark appearance of the high-rise setting. Most horror films these days go for that post-Se7en look – filthy and dank and decaying, which looks cool, but has kind of become visual shorthand that tries to make up for a lack of actual scary stuff (see crap set piece films like Saw for example) and, more importantly, doesn't really jibe with reality. Most of us deal with over-lit, over-modern spaces. That sexy, 70's lower east side NYC look just doesn't exist anymore, and defiantly not in a place like Japan. Totally freaky stuff is secretly scarier when it happens in brightly lit spaces.

This is totally a "throw in the DVD player when you're hanging out drinking and kicking it with a bunch of people" film. Not to be taken seriously, but still good, bloody low budget fun.

Vague spoilers...ish

"Tokyo Psycho" is about...well, not what the title suggests. While it might be suggested that the film is about a city wide manhunt for a deranged killer, it's actually confined to the escapades of a single woman and the nerdy guy from the back of the class who still has a crush on her from school. Still, "Sexually Confused Apartment Block Pervert" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, yet that is what the film concerns itself with.

Shot in an almost documentary style and running at a very modest 78 minutes, "Tokyo Psycho" certainly doesn't outstay its welcome too much, however the short running time doesn't mean it is fast paced. It does get off to a reasonable start, with the central character having an unpleasant encounter with a nut who may or may not be Pete Burns from Dead or Alive...yet this doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the film.

The characters is where the film really slips up. The "killer" really isn't threatening at all, and the central heroine is pretty hard to root for; yet this isn't so much the fault of the actress, but the fault of the writer who gave her nothing to work with. To be fair, the minimal cast does do its best; however with the clichés coming thick and fast (who'd have thought the stalker would have boarded up the windows of his apartment and plastered pictures of his target everywhere?) and a unsatisfying ending that disjoints the film even further (which takes some doing with the paper thin story), "Tokyo Psycho" doesn't leave a good or bad impression; it's just yet another average Japanese "horror" with little in the way of scares or thrills; destined to sink into the abyss of mediocrity.