Akumu tantei

In Tokyo, Detective Sekiya (Ren Ôsugi) investigates the death of two suicides with Detective Wakamiya (Masanobu Ando) and the rookie Detective Keiko Kirishima (Hitomi). Both victims were stabbed while sleeping and the skeptical and experienced Sekiya concludes that they have committed suicide. However, Wakamiya discovers that both victims had dialed "0" on their cell-phones before their death and they recorded a weird message. The police officers believe that someone is inducing potential suicidal persons to kill themselves, but the chief of police decides to split the team and assigns Keiko to find a medium to help the police in the investigation. She meets Kyoichi Kagenuma (Ryuhei Matsuda), who is also a suicidal man with the ability to enter in the dreams, and tries to force the reluctant man to help her.

"Akumu Tantei", a.k.a. "Nightmare Detective", is a stylish thriller with a character that recalls Freddy Krueger since he attacks his victims in their dreams. The sexy Hitomi performs a detective that in a certain moment fights to stay awake, recalling for example, Kristen Parker in the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise. Despite having a wonderful cinematography, the unoriginal screenplay is very confused and I expected much more from a movie directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Caçador de Pesadelos" ("Nightmare Hunter")

You know a "horror" movie is just "ok", at best, when, an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie you start thinking, this movie would be a lot better with more character development. I know there are 2 sequels, so maybe the characters get a bit more "meat" on them in those sequels. But as for this one I found myself not caring about any of the characters. For me, in order for a horror movie to be good, you gotta care for at least one of the characters. Here, I just didn't. Even towards the end when they did decide to, barely, delve into the characters backstory, it was just too little to late. At first I was thinking maybe it was just bad subtitles. But after reading other reviews, it sounds like everything was translated just fine and the movie itself was, as I already said, just ok. If I'm not invested in your characters in the first part, you can guarantee I won't have any desire to see the sequels.

People are committing suicide in bloody, messy ways, and the police are at their wit's end as to why. The deaths are somehow connected to a mystery man on the victims' cell phones. Getting desperate, the cops decide to broaden their investigation, and enlist the services of the titular psychic.

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE is yet one more example of inventive, bizarre horror from Japan. It starts out with some familiar cell phone insanity, quickly morphing into something completely different. Blurring the line between dreams and reality, ND pays homage to the classics while remaining original...

Shinya Tsukamoto directs and plays the bad guy in this supernatural thriller, and even though I liked it pretty much, it doesn't stand up well against his other classics. People are dying horrible bloody suicides which seem connected to a recent cell phone conversation they had with a person identified as "O". A beautiful female detective takes over the case, and meets up with a guy that has the ability to enter other people's dreams. Not a novel or original story idea by Tsukamoto, but it's still pretty interesting. When the lady detective makes a call to "O" which dooms her, she calls upon the nightmare detective to enter her dreams and save her. I see a sequel to this movie is in post production, and I hope it's better than the original. Seems kind of funny to me that Tsukamoto is making a sequel to this one, but who knows? From any other director on this subject matter, the movie would probably be a flop, but being Tsukamoto, he adds enough suspense and some gory suicides to make it interesting.

What a letdown. When I first heard about this film, the premise of a 'nightmare detective' battling a serial killer within the victims' dream state seemed immensely appealing. And it being directed by the man responsible for the brilliant Tetsuo sealed the deal!! How would he spin the concept differently than Wes Craven's Elm Street series? But then, the misgivings started to creep in. Its being released by Dimension EXTREME stateside. Ugh. Could a more trend pandering and generic name for a releasing company even be possible? And unfortunately, the film itself is just as trend pandering. Stylistically, Tsukamoto blends every flashy aesthetic technique that is currently trendy: desaturated colors mixed in with scenes filmed through saturated color filters that come and go at random, uninspired Paul Greengrass type shaky camera-work/zooming being just a few examples. Aesthetics aside, the narrative is depressingly conventional and straightforward for the likes of a Tsukamoto. An interesting connection between the state of dreaming and death arises but is treated superficially and seems thrown in just so the killer can make creepy and twisted little monologues. But the film's main weakness is in the casting. Matsuda's emo, brooding, hair in his face 'nightmare detective' aimlessly mopes around through the whole film in perpetual angst. Why so glum, chum? Angst does not equal profound. And newcomer hitomi, while very easy on the eyes, is just completely unconvincing as the star detective who elicits Matsuda's supernatural talents to track down the killer. I also tried to concoct some sort of profound metacommentary for Tsukamoto's self casting but failed. I give this 2 stars because, despite all I wrote above, there are a few genuinely startling and well shot moments that demonstrate Tsukamoto's reputation as one of the greats of J-horror. I hear that this was a "for hire" job for him and unfortunately, it shows.