Kuru

It's hard to describe this film but I will do my best. Imagine Haruki Murakami doing a Jap version of The Exorcist. It's an ambitious sort of film that not many people will get. For starters, it ain't your typical J-horror film even if the trailer behaves in such a way.

It Comes kinda reminded me of the Suspiria remake. It's an art film disguised as a horror film or the other way round. It's complex and the narrative always shifts focus. You don't get to see "it" whatever it may be. Some descriptions of the film erroneously call it a "monster." You're not really sure what it is. Is it a demon? A ghost? A God?

It doesn't matter, because what matters is what "it" does to the characters of this film, and what matters even more is who they are and what makes them tick.

It probably won't make much sense while watching it a first time not to mention it's overlong and the first half plays like a family drama. You get to see a funeral, a wedding party, a baby party. These scenes will test your patience if you signed up for a horror film but if you're into artsy films you will dig

If you hold on for long enough you will see all Hell breaking loose. The outrageous storyline along with the superior visuals and the extreme violence, guarantee you a one of a kind experience. The Buddhist exorcism sequence has to be seen to be believed. The mediocre CGI in some scenes-especially the "blood river," is not enough to diminish the impact.

If you have viewed the previous films by Tetsuya Nakashima you pretty much know what you signed up for, other audiences may be baffled.

I'm certainly not going to show this one to my 12 year old nephew who's idea of a good horror film are the latest installments of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween.

One final thing. When you watch this film, make sure to watch it LOUD. Really LOUD.

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

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]

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.

Somewhere in "It Comes" is a great film waiting to burst forth. The visuals can't be beat; they were right on point. Excellent cinematography and editing. The weak bits? The over-acting. It just became too much after a while. The length of the film was also overwhelming. It took me three days to see it. Exorcism films have been done to death since "The Exorcist", and every single one of them have failed to best the original 1973 version. I've seen quite a few Korean exorcism films and this Japanese version falls into the same trap of over-acting and cliched tropes. Oh well. It did seem like they put a lot of money into it, so there's that.