kaneko

The contemporary horror scene is glutted with tired rehashes of familiar concepts and an over-reliance on quick jump scares, with far too little in the way of character-driven, nuanced, complex storytelling. Absentia is definitely an exception to these low standards.

The core ideas are both original and clever, and, while supernatural and high-concept, they are totally rooted in the characters and their relationships. The human drama is fundamental to, rather than coincidental with, the structure of the narrative. The script even takes the risk of presenting multiple audience-identification characters among its leads, which in less careful hands could run the risk of alienating viewers used to having a single, simple narrative point of view, but the differing perspectives - psychological and emotional - of the two leads are well-balanced and complementary.

There are a couple of effective jump scares early on, but, as the story progresses, the thrust moves entirely to the slow burn, with the carefully maintained atmosphere and psychological implications of the scenario serving as the locus of the horror.

Shusuke Kaneko is probably the best director working in the realms of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror today (only Peter Jackson comes close), and with GMK he got to fulfill his lifelong dream of directing a Godzilla film. His passion for and knowledge of the genre's classics is constantly in evidence, even as he is surpassing them in style, theme, and characterization. Never has Godzilla himself been so awesomely destructive, nor his monster opponents so sympathetic. Because Kaneko storyboarded the fx scenes as well as the human drama (usually the fx director storyboards his scenes separately), there is a greater visual and emotional consistency to the film than usually occurs in the genre. Only the original Godzilla and Kaneko's own Gamera 3 sit on the top level of genre masterpieces along with GMK.

Fun fantasy, with a good cast and neat-looking effects. Amamiya keeps things moving along quickly, and has a good balance of dramatic elements with goofy fun stuff. The score is magnificent. Yuko Moriyama is cool, as always, though I wish she were in the movie a little more. Toshiyuki Nagashima is a great, dignified lead. Hiroshi Abe is one of the coolest dudes in cinema today, and it's a pleasure to watch him killing loads of bad guys in efficient ways.