उपयोगकर्ता समीक्षाएं

My first movie at Viennale'2000 and it is this one! I have never seen it before and therefore didn't know anything about it, but I have never expected to see something wonderful like this.

In it's 95 minutes running time I was thrilled, there wasn't a single minute when I was bored, or distracted. The main actors played really great and the whole ambiente of the movie set was excellent.

Sure he used a bit "6th sense", as you can see the breath and the dead people, but IMO it's much better than the 6th sense!

If you can watch this movie, do it! Don't wait, don't hesitate, it's absolute worth the time!

This moody Japanese movie by revered director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a loose remake of the classic 1964 chiller "Séance on a Wet Afternoon." Either that, or it's based on the same source novel, which I haven't read. Nearly every element of the plot is tweaked and twisted, with an emphasis on the supernatural. The lead actress is no Kim Stanley, and her character's predicament is a bit different, but she does a fine job as a psychic trying to come to terms with her powers. "Séance" was apparently made for television, but it really lacks the typical styling of typical made-for-TV movies. It's better and more somber than Kurosawa's "Horror Theater" TV segment. It features crisp, clean cinematography and the scary sequences are enhanced by inventive camera-work. Unfortunately, these scenes are too few and far between. The majority of the film moves at a snail's pace. Whereas "Wet Afternoon" features bizarre yet captivating characters that keep the film from being a complete bummer, there's not much in this film to distract from the overwhelming depressing nature and tone. This makes it difficult to get through in one sitting.

Something a bit strange for a Kurosawa movie, Korei is (debatably) a remake of an old American movie (of the same name, if memory serves). It seems that in some of the scenes Kurosawa is much more focused on replicating the emotions of the domestic experience than trying to scare. After all, anyone who's seen Kairo, Cure or Charisma knows he has nearly master the latter. Because of this, if find that Korei is not as frightening as his typical fair. Also, some of the household drama comes off forced for the near first-timer in this field.

But another way of thinking about it: it seems there is a pronounced old-time hollywood feel to some of the home scenes which may have been very intentional. All of the movie is presented as a sort of reference to this: the lightning behind the characters as they think evil thoughts, the simplicity of most of the shots (devoid of the overwhelming atmosphere typically present in K. Kurosawa films), even the fair simplicity of the characters. If it is seen this way (which i am increasingly convinced is how it may have been intended) then it is possible that the unlikely touches seen in this movie are not a failure at all, but an attempt at a homage. Whether that homage is a failure or not, I am in no position to say.

Overall, this movie (and Cure for that matter) is nicely done. With Seance, appropriately, a lot of negative space mise-en-scene was deftly carried out; with Cure, narrative as well as formal (eg spliced split-second frames, abrupt scene cuts etc) ellipses are done well with good editing. I liked the continuity of both the protagonist and the restaurant (albeit from a different shooting angle) through both films. My only problem with it (and Cure) is that sometimes the aesthetics feels contrived, and the understatement/'minimalism' is, ironically, overwrought & cliché. There's no greatness here (in terms of psychological horror/terror, there are much more genius auteurs in both the East and West, eg the 'other' Kurosawa's Rashomon and Polanski's earlier films, to name a few respectively), but it has thought, and is still better than 90% of the sh*t out there.

As far as being a horror movie goes, this movie leaves much to be desired. More of an atmospheric thriller than a horror movie per say, Korei is The Sixth Sense, minus the scary scenes. As in accordance with modern Japanese horror movies, Korei relies mostly on increasing psychological intensity rather than the Hollywoodized method of striking visual effects in order to achieve its chills. In this movie, you don't see any gore, or anything "scary" in that sense, but there is the constant pervading feeling of dread... which does keep the audience hooked. It's oftentimes reminiscent of Cure, with just as slow a plot.

The storyline is well developed and you can't help but feel sorry for the characters. Engaging and provocative, if you're into Japanese horror movies I'd suggest giving this one a try. If you're new to the genre, go watch Ringu instead. Overall, a good film... just not a good horror movie.

6/10

This movie should not be seen as a straightforward ghost movie, nor as a basic series of set-ups, struggles and resolutions. It is a gripping movie, masterfully shot, bleak in its vision yet assembled with an inspiring meticulousness.

Junco is a psychic who feels trapped by her extra-sensory powers in more than one way. For one, she cannot hold a regular job, despite her best efforts. She is also aware that her gift will never be completely understood or taken seriously by the public at large, not even by those who seek her help.

When a freak coincidence lands a missing girl in her husband Katsuhiko's hardware case - after the police, as a last resort, has asked for her advice about the case - she sees it as a possible opportunity to make a name for herself as a serious and respected psychic, while clearing her husband and her of any responsibility in the girl's disappearance. She sees a way out the couple's humdrum, boring life, and her husband wants to believe it too. Needless to say, not much goes according to plan.

**NOTE** About the doppelganger appearing in the movie, as mentionned in a comment below. The double does represent impending death for Katsuhiko. The decision to have him burn his double alive was a way to show how he is not willing to accept a fate he has not chosen.

There are two kinds of films in the world, my friends. Those in which it is easy to find a meaning (if possible, a moral one) and those which tell a story with such devices that you, spectator, are free to construe it. Seance is such a film. I for one do not see it as a horror or a crime movie. It has the required number of supernatural events, but what is far more frightening than that is the subtle psychological illness that affects the two hapless heroes, Junko and her husband. These two are completely hollow — the husband filled with noises, the wife with ghosts indeed ; they very simply do not live on the same physical plane as other people (colleagues, patrons... and the young girl who gets trapped in the husband's case) and it takes two extremely gifted actors, Yakusho and Fubuki, to convey this hollowness, this muted remoteness, as they are conveyed here. Kurosawa does not make any redundant comment on that stupendous hollowness : he merely shows it ; that indeed is his job as a filmmaker. The result is, in my opinion, one of his best films, together with Bright Future and Doppelgaenger. For yes : the doppelgaenger variation which one or two of the other commentators find so irksome (unfairly so, in my opinion : the eager student who mentions the apparition of a doppelgaenger in someone's life as a sign of impending demise isn't right* ; in literature the thing has been plaguing many a cheerless Romantic and postromantic hero for years) is back in Kurosawa's latest full length feature, Doppelgaenger (there is a Japanese DVD with English subtitles). No important message in that wonderfully quirky, eerily violent comedy (Yakusho again plays the double part). Let us rejoice about that fact : as long as a film puzzles more than it scares, it will never be remade in Hollywood.

* And he shouldn't be believed any more than the misleading psychiatrist in Cure, should he ?

I am a great fan of Kurosawa's movies, yet I find this film a weak shadow of his usual work. I think this comes in large measure from his own statement that this film is a combination of a horror movie combined with a crime movie and the original 1960s story. It seems just too convoluted to succeed. On top of that, he claims that there were numerous rewritings of the 1960s story to fit it into the real world, whatever that means. The Left Elbow Index considers seven elements in film--acting, production sets, dialogue, plot, film continuity, character development, and artistry--on a scale from 10 for very good to 5 for average and to 1 for it needs some help. The acting, production sets, and dialogue are all rated average. The acting seems stilted and seems better timed to fit a soap. The production sets appear to be little more than what one sees in one's daily environs. And the dialogue seems to fit modern life, no great philosophies and no great blunders. The plot is rated weak since it appears difficult to sort out important elements of plot from trivial events in the film. The elements of plot and the emotional level of the film seem not to fit together well, even the suspense scenes appear hollow. The film continuity appears upset by the episodic TV nature of the juxtaposition of scenes, which seems to present too much clutter. I wonder why film makers tend towards putting characters in autos and driving them in and out of scenes, like Roy Rogers cowboy movies. We know how Roy got to and from where ever he was going, must he always be seen jumping on and off Trigger? There seems little character development to speak of, probably because the characters do not appear to be in a suspense, a horror story, or the real world. The artistry is rated as average, keeping in mind that average for Kurosawa is excellent for others. The close-ups are good and there are some interesting camera angles. The Left Elbow Index average is 3.3, up to a 5.0 when equated with the IMDb scale. The film is worth seeing, as any of Kurosawa's work is, but don't expect the master at his best.

The Sixth Sense and A Simple Plan by way of Martin Heidegger, this genre-bending thriller is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Katsuhiko (Koji Yakusho) is a mild-mannered sound-technician who is married to Junco (Jun Fubuki).

While at first glance Junco seems to be an average hausfrau, she possesses great clairvoyant powers.

Though she has slowly and quietly built a reputation as a medium, she proves to be completely incapable of working in a normal service industry job; she has the unfortunately tendency of being able to see the crimes of her patrons. Katsuhiko is aware of her unusual abilities but prefers to think of her as "normal."

Young psychology graduate student Hayakawa (Teuyoshi Kusanagi) invites Junco to join his study on the paranormal. At the same time, the police are desperately searching for a young girl who was kidnapped by an ex-cop turned pervert.

At Hayakawa's behest, the cops consult with Junco as to the child's whereabouts. Ironically enough, the girl escapes her captor and takes refuge in Katsuhiko's equipment case while he records sounds in the mountains.

The next day, Junco's psychic sonar goes off and she discovers the missing child in their garage. This freak happenstance awakens a long-dormant ambition in Junco: convinced that her discovery was not a striking enough find, she hatches an ill-conceived scheme to make it seem more dramatic. While Katsuhiko tends to the unconscious girl, Junco scatters clues throughout the western suburbs of Tokyo and then informs the police of her psychic "insights."

As the film progresses, their plan goes awry and the child meets a bad end. Junco's abilities boomerang on her, and soon she and Katsuhiko are haunted by the ghost of the girl. Noted stars Yukari Ishida and Show Aikawa make cameos. This film was screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.

From then on, alas, this movie turns into a cheap TV horror movie –one of the cheapest genres ever existed. When I saw Kôrei I've already seen the very interesting Kaïro, also by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; after that positive impression had someone told me that Mr. Kurosawa was capable of clumsiness when dealing with a fantastic story I wouldn't lend him or her ears, but unfortunately that would be true. When I'm seeing a movie or reading a story I can suspend my feeling of disbelief and believe in a ghost, I don't have problems with unreality, whereas I cannot believe when the characters in a story abruptly and against their own psychology, start to act the opposite way they would. Mr. Kurosawa needs his story to go in one direction and forces the characters and the plot to achieve his needs. That is one of the biggest mistake an author can make.

Anyway –this a a TV movie– nonetheless, if you liked it, see Dark Water (http://imdb.com/title/tt0308379/), The Eye (http://imdb.com/title/tt0325655/) and Kaïro (http://imdb.com/title/tt0286751/), they're better, far better than the last 54 minutes of this one. Of course, you always can stop the DVD player when the display shows you 42 minutes; you'll be sparing yourselves the disappointment of seeing how the very decent first part of this movie helplessly wrecks.

I cannot remember being scared by a movie like this. "The Sixth Sense" had very scary parts, but this was scary throughout. Writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who showed us what he could do when he transformed the thriller "Cure" into a chilling horror-like ending, now brings us pure horror with "Séance (Korei)". If you think the little girl in Poltergeist or the Exorcist are scary, you've never been haunted by a little girl before. Kurosawa makes this little darling so creepy that you might see her in the streets for the next few days (I'm slightly exaggerating here, but aren't movies always a bit exaggerated). Which is not exaggerated, however, is the skill Kurosawa has to entrance the viewer in a slow cumulating fear that creeps up from the bottom of your spine and spread through your shivering body. He uses hallways, shadows, rooms and corners like a magician and makes you feel right in the middle of the action, frightened, expecting and not knowing what to do.

Visually mesmerizing (unintentional reference to what we learn in "Cure"), "Seance" still has a solid story which puts characters in an interesting situation and begs the audience to think "what would you do if this happened to you?". Acting is very potent, especially from lead actor Koji Yakusho. The story has enough twists and turns to keep you captivated and some actual substance as to the role of the paranormal in today's society. What endures undoubtedly, is the atmosphere of fright.

If you want to see a scary movie, see this one.

Note: For those who think this is a "Sixth Sense" knock-off, please be advised that this movie was made in Japan and that there were ghost stories there way before Hollywood. I saw this movie at a special screening, in the presence of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and he was telling us that he based the idea for the ghosts in his story on various credible people he knows who claim that they actually witnessed ghost apparitions. It was a recurring theme that the room seemed colder when they appeared, so he made the breath visible to indicate that. The fact that he portrayed them without a face was his own interpretation and what he wished to express to the viewer.

Despite clearly being a TV movie, this film is yet another amazing and film from legendary director Kiyoshi Kurosawa ("Cure", "Kairo"). The main plot revolves around Junco and Saito, who are a troubled married couple. Saito works as a sound man for TV shows, while Junco stays at home. Junco has the power of foresight, so she sometimes holds séances. When a little girl is kidnapped, Junco devises a plan that will make her famous. What she doesn't know is that if she is not careful, the plan can backfire...

Since I am a huge fan of Asian horror/suspense films, I loved this. The tension is high throughout, and the scares are purely psychological. No cheap jumps here. Instead you get some pretty horrifying scenes, that will stay with you long after you see this movie. This film also has a valuable message in the end. I know it's not for everybody, but I highly recommend this. I simply loved it.

My rating: 10/10

A kidnapper is apprehended by the police, but the young girl he abducted is still missing. The police bring a medium onto the case to see if she can contact the girl's spirit, or at least determine whether the girl is still alive. However, the medium is going through a sort of mid-life crisis and believes that she and her husband can turn the case to their advantage. Of course, in simple minds bad ideas breed like rabbits, and soon this witless couple find themselves working against the police.

"Seance" is a fundamentally flawed film, cursed from the very start by an inept script. The film's plot rests on a mammoth coincidence, and the central characters become utterly unsympathetic as soon as they begin covering up for a crime they didn't commit. Stupidity does not attract empathy, nor do cheap scares. Granted, the ghosts in the film are fairly creepy; director Kiyoshi Kurosawa takes advantage of many shadowy halls and ominous doorways, teaching his audience to fear open spaces. Unfortunately, when neither the plot nor the characters give us a reason to care, thrills alone cannot carry a film. Cliches abound here as well, including the requisite psychology expert who--at the very beginning of the story--primes us with information about a certain type of psychic manifestation which is key to a scene late in the film.

Perhaps "The Sixth Sense" was not the most sophisticated horror film of recent years, but the quality of this knock-off is nothing less than ghastly.

Filmmaker Kurosawa Kiyoshi accordingly remarked that he felt somewhat constrained by making this as a TV movie, being unable to include more violent scenes. Yet violence isn't really so completely predominant in his films after all, and inasmuch as his works bear a common look and feel, 'Séance' otherwise certainly looks and feels like Kurosawa. The tone is generally muted, the production values are a secondary concern, the plot development is somewhat soft, scattered, or nebulous to one degree or another if not also the plot itself, and some familiar faces join his cast. Though actually, whatever the particulars of how it was made, I think this 2000 release is surely one of the man's tighter and more cohesive endeavors. No few of his projects filmed for the big screen struggle with story ideas that are helplessly vague (and I don't even mean 'Charisma' or 'Serpent's path'), with some instances being worse than others, but his adaptation of Mark McShane's novel boasts a concrete plot that just takes its time to entirely crystallize. To much the same point, the horror vibes tend to be subtler and sparser here than elsewhere in the man's varied oeuvre in a story that is more purely dramatic, but they are definite all the same, and one way or another the picture gets unexpectedly dark.

It seems a step too far to say that this is one of Kurosawa's foremost successes, but it's solidly made and written, and increasingly engrossing as the tale progresses. In fact, not to discount anyone else's contributions, but the screenplay co-written with Onishi Tetsuya is a core strength in these ninety-seven minutes: when sound technician Koji and psychic wife Junko unwittingly get involved in a serious situation, they intend to use the scenario to their advantage to illustrate her abilities, but things go awry and there are more surprises in store for the couple. Beyond selfishness, shortsightedness, and maddening guilt the feature touches upon crushed aspirations and the hopeless emptiness of modern life, and how even kind and well-meaning people can stumble down a forsaken path. There is plentiful substance even in these themes, and in the characterizations, but the narrative is firmly compelling and absorbing, not least with a distinct psychological edge to it - and with the further genre flavors that Kurosawa and Onishi infused into the material, this absolutely produces some palpable chills over time. Further benefiting from strong scene writing and the filmmaker's steady, insightful guidance as director, the sum total leans more toward drama than horror, but ultimately is even better than I'd hoped.

Provided gratifyingly sure-footed writing and direction, the rest of the production is just as terrific. The cast give excellent performances of range and personality, with Fubuki Juna and prolific Yakusho Koji naturally standing out most both for their prominence and on their own merits. Gary Ashiya's music only irregularly rears its head, but where it does the score is a superb complement to the proceedings as it lends to the uneasy atmosphere. The same definitely goes for the sound design, and sound effects; judiciously employed in this ghost story, they unquestionably have impact. From production design and art direction, to costume design, to the sparing stunts and visual effects, everything looks and sounds quite sharp. It's a quieter variety of horror flick, but most assuredly kith and kin with much of what else Kurosawa has given us, and we get all that we came for. One way or another I don't think it's an outright must-see, but anyone who is open to titles of such a tenor will find a lot to appreciate in 'Séance,' and I don't think there are any specific criticisms to impart, either. I sat with mixed expectations, and I'm very pleased with how good this is. Don't necessarily go out of your way for it, but this I'm inclined to think this is one of the filmmaker's sturdier films, and 'Séance' is well worth checking out if you have the opportunity.