Caçador de Pesadelos

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.

The premise of "Nightmare Detective" is very interesting:A Japanese detective investigates two mysterious and very bloody suicides,somehow connected as the two victims dialed "0" on their mobiles moments before their death.The detective comes to learn of a man who has the supposed ability to manipulate people's dreams and if the case is going to be solved the detective succumbs to the realization that she must dial the mysterious "0" herself..."Nightmare Detective" is the film about dreams,alternate realities and suicides in Japan.The viewer will be trapped in a myriad of dreams within dreams and alternating worlds.Too much shaky camera movements sometimes irritated me,but the visuals are splendid and the suicides are quite disturbing with lots of blood spilled.As a fan of Tsukamoto's unique visions I wasn't disappointed with "Nightmare Detective".

First of all, I've never seen a Shinya Tsukamoto movie before this. I read reviews commenting on how this is his most unoriginal work, and I really can't confirm or deny that. As a standalone piece, however, I can say this is completely unlike any other detective movie I've ever seen—and it does so without cheese. On a technical level, does that make it original? Not necessarily, but it certainly isn't unoriginal either. Either way, it's very entertaining and interesting, and as I just said, lacks the cheese that the majority of supernatural horror films have lately.

The reason it lacks cheese is because Nightmare Detective builds up layers of gritty reality through mainly being a comic (but not comical) detective mystery. This gives a lot more weight to the supernatural elements, and creates a lot cooler tone. I've seen people bash the detective elements of the story, but I personally thought they were genius. The idea of having two detectives, one a police detective and the other a dream detective working together was very cool. Like I said, the idea isn't wholesale original, but it's certainly different and very well done.

Shinya Tsukamoto's camera-work and cinematography left me in awe more than once. The man knows how to direct. The entire movie has the best production value I've ever seen in an Asian movie, and I've seen a lot of Asian movies. The detail is crisp, and sometimes with color washout that completed the gritty, dirty comic book tone. The dream sequences are not all-out surrealism as would be cliché, but have subtle nods at surrealism while being otherwise realistic. Once again, genius.

I've read reviews that trash this movie for not being scary. Simply put: what movie IS scary anymore? I've seen hundreds of horror movies, and I can count the ones that were honestly scary on one hand. I can't compare this to Shinya Tsukamoto's other works, as I said, but from what I take, this is a step down on the level of terror. Fine. Why is that bad? A movie that exists only to be scary is just like a movie that exists just to be gory—it's hallow. The Exorcist is quoted as "the scariest movie of all time", but when I watched it I wasn't scared once. The thing is, the level of terror in a movie is mainly relative. Is Nightmare Detective scary? Some will think so. Did I? To an extent, yes.

As far as the acting goes, I didn't notice it being good or bad. As for the level of boredom, it isn't very fast paced but it will keep your interest until the end, which is something I can't say about many movies. Dialogue is standard, and never too excessive, which is another plus. The music is unoffensive and unnoticeable, except where Shinya Tsukamoto uses some really cool mellow songs to underline the mood, and it works very well.

Overall, it's very much worth a watch, especially if you're a fan of mystery graphic novels, because it carries the same feel and flow. I'd even go as far as to say it's worth a buy. It did what it wanted to accomplish, and even if Shinya Tsukamoto's other works are better than this, I don't see how anyone would be disappointed.

4/10

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")

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.