Kuru

To put it succinctly, you need to read a plot summary to understand this movie. The acting was over-the-top silly, the story line was jumbled, and the movie was too long and poorly edited with cheap CGI to keep my interest.

The movie gets a few points for containing a couple scary and disturbing scenes, but they are lost in the overall mix.

Not worth a watch- skip it

[4/10]

Hideki (Satoshi Tsumabuki) and Kana (Haru Kuroki) are happy young newlyweds, ecstatic about the pending birth of their first child. When a visitor shows up at Hideki's workplace, saying she wants to talk to him about Chisa, Hideki is confused - that is the name he and Kana have chosen for the baby, but nobody else knows that. The visitor disappears before Hideki sees her, the colleague who took the message is soon very, very dead, and Hideki begins to have dreams about a creature, about the phrase "blood calls" and about the fate of the baby. So, as anyone would, he turns to an exorcist named Makoto (Nana Komatsu) for aid.... I won't say more than that about the plot because it quickly becomes more and more convoluted as the (longish, 2 1/4 hours) film goes on. Many years ago, I discovered Tetsuya Nakashima's "Kamikaze Girls" (about strange subcultures among Japan's teenage girls, it's a fantastic coming of age flick) at Montreal's Fantasia Festival, and when this year's selections for that great festival included "It Comes," described as Nakashima's first foray into horror, I was hooked; "Kamikaze Girls" is not only one of my favorite Fantasia films, it's one of my favorite films of all time. True to form, "It Comes" takes all the horror tropes one might imagine, and turns it all up to eleven. I can't say that it actually *scared* me because it was just so over-the-top, but my goodness it is a mighty fine, hallucinatory ride!

This film could have really hit home the subject of child neglect/abuse, all in disguise of stories told by adults deluded by self-pity. One-dimensionally vilifying the characters gets in the way of exploring the movie's main message: exploitation of parenthood as a tool for self-gratification.

We also get distracted by

• bad, unscary CG blood
• huge monologues that conveniently try to explain the plot
• unnecessary characters (Tsuda, Kotoko) that scream at each other rather than highlight nuances of their relationships with Hideki/Kana/Chisa

Horror movies can be tough - to find out how to mix them, how many parts drama and other elements you can or have to put into the mix. Mystery also works wonders. Keep the audience guessing if you can. Something this movie does succesfully (imho), which is not an easy feat.

Some things may seem different than others and the movie does warrant more than one viewing to see things with the knowledge of where the story and the characters are heading. Really fine tuned and edge of your seat suspension. It has quite a lot of flaws when it comes to the story itself ... but just don't think about them - it'll make the experience better.

The visuals are nice and the acting is good.

But the story is dragged out. It takes forever for the sister to arrive. About 40 minutes could have been cut to make it more engaging.