Nightmare Detective

Visually this movie is really good. I was able to watch it at a theatre in Stuttgart as part of the "Fantasy Filmfest Nights" that take place every year in the spring (for a few years now) for quite some time now.

While this movie tries to mix paranormal and normal things together it does not achieve this goal entirely. This movie does have a few good scares (and it is bloody violent too, so be prepared for that), but you're never really emotionally attached to the main characters. The problem here lies within the characterization. You do see people get hurt here, but it's not like you get to know them to really care. Even if they are "only" in danger (you have to see the movie to see if there any false scares here, although if you have watched some horror movies, you will be able to foresee a few things), you're not really worried about them. You just wait for a shock to happen ...

When all is said and done (the end of the movie), you might be left with the feeling that there could've been more ... been done with the material (idea)!

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")

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.

The premise caught me and I was on my way to watch it on DVD. It is haunting creepy and very violent. This violent thriller/fantasy had me stayed up for a night. The director had the story that looks like real. That scared me, pondering on the main theme of this, "suicide". After the thrilling violent suicides, you will find that violence is the least point you take note, it is the brutal violence, the idea on suicide when you just think about it. So it pretty got me like straight to the brain.

The story shows the first bloody suicide and Keiko (Hitomi), a cop transferred is discovering the first suicide. She realises that it is no ordinary suicide but the other police thinks the other way. Then it shows the second suicide, the non-stop stabbing on the neck, the dead man's wife told them that it is like that he was in a nightmare which is true. They found that "O" is the one who killed them. They want the mysterious guy who can go to people's dreams, played by Ryuhei Matsuda, but he says that he don't want to go to people's dreams anymore. Until when one of cop calls "O" and awaits for death. He can't be saved. Keiko calls "O" and wants to arrest him because she wants to save more victims falling into his hands. From there, the thrilling "race" of not sleeping starts. It may be confusing but I am able to understand it. Be warned of very shaky scenes where you can't even see what is happening.

Overall : It will seduce you to its dark mystery and from there, you will find it hard to take your eyes from the screen. The director did it with a sense of humour and dark mystery. It is very bloody but soon it is not the point.

The Singaporean DVD consists of TV spots, trailers and some boring stuff. There is not even a making of. The DVD is rated M-18.

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.