A burglar enters an apartment and discovers the long-dead body of a man in a locked chamber. While he storms out of the apartment he sees a mysterious man clad in white, and making it to his car, he sees him again but this time burning himself in front of him.
Fast forward, and a string of unexplained suicides starting with that of the burglar plague the city, a repeat of an event that occurred years earlier that stopped as suddenly as it had started. Among its victims were relatives of the protagonists who must now solve the riddle of what it all means.
This is the setup of SINDROM, an obscure Russia horror movie which does not really deserve its obscurity. It is well-constructed, well-shot, well-acted, atmospheric and has a reasonably logical ending.
Though the mystery turns out to be variant of the trope of that seeing something can have adverse consequences, common to movies like RINGU (1998) and its American remake THE RING (2002), THE GRUDGE (2004), SHUTTER (2004), and a number of other such movies, its slow reveal is effective while retaining a modicum of its own interpretation. SINDROM does not quite reach the aforementioned movies, especially with respect to the scare factor, but it is by no means a bad horror film and it does have its own disturbing moments.
The main problem is that the characters (thankfully only occasionally) do not proceed very intelligently, and that even with an apparent dub, the voice actors all have a Russian accent (which I did get used to).
I liked that the conclusion even posed something of an ethical dilemma, though it gave an easy way out.
In short, if you like movies like the above, you will probably like this one as well.
