The Complex

There are good twists and bad twists. Good twists are the ones which enrich the story with surprise without demolishing it. Bad twists are of the "It was just a dream" sort and just annihilate everything that happened so far. "The Complex" by director Hideo Nakata, maker of the famous Ringu movies, appears to have both kinds of twists. Any way, it has too many.

Which is unfortunate because "The Complex" has a lot things going for it. Like the talented Atsuko Maeda, who plays Asuka, a girl who just freshly moved with her family into an apartment complex. Much to Asuka's distress, she's disturbed at night by strange noises coming from the apartment next door. Not much to our surprise, things are getting worse.

I liked the camera work and editing. Like, at the beginning, a few effective camera moves and cuts introduce us to the main characters and give us a good sense of location, how the apartments are placed and what the environment of the building is like. Acting is well throughout, too. As for the pace, it is a bit slow at the beginning, but that's fine since it allows us to become familiar with the characters. And the characters are ones that I could care for.

Everything was going fine, so I don't understand why Nakata had to add twists, which at times felt forced and disrupted the mood. In the Ringu movies, Nakata established ambiguous characters without sudden changes. Maybe he thought "The Complex" would otherwise have been not exciting enough? Actually, I liked its calm parts.

I watched this film during the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2013. I had high hopes for this film, as it was being directed by Hideo Nakata, director of Ringu. It was an OK movie, unfortunately there was nothing too special about it.

The story was based around a new family that moved into a new housing complex, but the daughter, Asuka, began having strange experiences around the home, involving her neighbour & a young boy who always played alone.

There was good cinematography & Nakata did set the scenes well, building the tensions as you would expect from him. He created a sense of normal everyday life early on, while at the same time giving the audience an subtle clues that all is not quite right. There was a great use of unsettling music to add to the scenes, but I just felt like it didn't pay off, it just felt creepy at best.

The characters were interesting, with the lead actress playing Asuka doing a great job at carrying the tension & suspense through the earlier parts of the movie. There were a few typical Japanese horror clichés, but it didn't take away from the movie. I ended up feeling like I witnessed an interesting story, with the odd cheap scare & nothing more, when I was hoping for a little more creepy & scary.

This is an astonishingly inept movie. Plot lines appear out of nowhere, the characters are barely developed, and aside from one or two creepy visuals there is nothing to take away from this film. I loved Ringu and Dark Water, and apparently the director does as well, because this is basically a retread of both of those stories. I rented this thing on iTunes and I want my 4.99 back. Don't waste your money!

Hideo Nakata, director of the original The Ring and Dark Waters, returns with The Complex, supernatural horror about a young woman that moves to a new apartment in a mysterious complex. The Complex is a weird and hard to review movie... It is very intense and very scary at times, with a type of horror that never bets on jump scares, but mostly on anticipation and build-up intensity. The problem with The Complex resides with its structure. The movie changes mood and pace too often and too drastically, leaving the audience confused questioning the legitimacy of some scenes. The scenes seem to be placed with little criteria, like a puzzle that's is missing some pieces and has others upside down. It lacks solidity, leading to the inevitable feeling of unrealism: we are always aware that this is only a movie, and that is a shame because we should be absorbed and bothered by horror films. Scary? Absolutely. Well directed? Maybe this time Nakata got a little sloppy. Visit thefadingcam blog for more!

Maybe you've seen this or something similar before and the story itself won't surprise you that much. But the movie is more than decent. The horror does work on quite a few levels, even if you can see the jump scare coming. Plus there is a story (even if it might feel a bit like a cheat in the end).

The acting is nice, the characters well defined. There is some of the usual things you've come to known from horror movies from Asia. If you didn't get sick of it (some people can't see another woman with long hair hiding her face crawling on the floor or looking scary in general), you will get entertained and have a really good scary time