Creepy Review
I watched this yesterday!
Before going into it, I had see the poster, knew who was in it and wanted to see it based on the posters feel and the actors. Cos who would pass up a chance to see Nishijima Hidetoshi and Kagawa Teruyuki together! They are the perfect duo! Mozu, Double Face, Ryuusei Wagon and now this!! These two seriously. So yes, I went in not knowing a lot and oh boy oh boy, I was not prepared.
The movie is essentially a running theme of 'The Perfect Psychopath' and after an icident last year, Nishijima's decided to leave his cop job and join a university as a criminalist (is that the name?) lecturer and has moved into a new neighbourhood where both their neighbours are weird. And I mean weird.
This entire movie is weird! Seriously, there's something wrong and off with everyone except Nishijima's character himself. Seriously, just seeing everyone not being quite 'normal' is one thing that starts to play in your heard. Another thing that plays in your head is the main killer Nishijima is looking for. He's looking into a disappearnace case from 6 years prior and therefore trying to find what happened; eventually bodies are found; and thus he tries to find out who killed them.
There's one scene where he invites the only direct living relative from the disappearance case and he asks her to recall the last time she saw her family and how they'd been acting. And the scene begins with normal natural lighting and it's all light and airy and then as she talks, the lights get darker and it's almost like she's telling her story in the dark and then as she stops recalling, it all gets bright and light again. I was so fucking impressed with the lighting changes in this scene, and I'd PAY for them to tell and show me how they did it; I can't decide if it was CG lighting edits or they actually changed the lighting on the set as she spoke. I wanna know!
So anyway, Nishijima is trying to figure out this case and who the murderer is and while this is happening his next door neighbour Kagawa is weird as fuck and his mood shifts SO quickly and then his daughter confessions to Nishijima 'he's not my father' and omg it really starts playing on your mind and you just have to keep watching and need to know more! Especially when Nishijima's wife starts to get cornered by Kagawa but we never see what they're talking about and she's slowly degenerating and closing down. Omg it's seriously mental.
The only parts I didn't like were, 'at one point does a cop get SO deep into a murderer's dungeon and NOT decide to run and call for back up' three times cops went in and instead of calling for backup as SOON as something is clearly off, they fucking go in and get themselves killed! WTF?! Those cops deserved to be killed if they're gunna do that!
Another negative was about halfway through we are shown how the murderer kills his victims and as the audience we are pretty told how he works and how he's gotten away with it etc. and I kinda wish it'd been more of a 'we learn about the murderer, the same time Nishijima discovers and learns about the murderer'. I feel it took the mystery and some of the entertainment away once we knew everything but Nishijima still didn't. But this was still suspenseful as fuck! I jumped so many fucking times cos I was SO into it, I didn't see things coming (I didn't even think to predict which proves how much I was concentrating on this).
The last negative was the ending; the murderer got his come-uppance which is great BUT seeing Nishijima's wife switch back from her docile state to normal as soon as his dead. I didn't understand it. Had she told her husband and they'd decided on this plan together in order to corner Kagawa? Or was she just doing it all to save herself from being killed. I kinda think it's the former idea cos Nishijima isn't that shocked when she's suddenly back to being normal.
I was so emotionally and mentalling drained from this movie. I was on the edge of my seat. My brain was running with ideas of who did it and how they did it and the suspense had me crapping myself. And this movie is actually a VERY slow movie, but I think it worked perfectly because everything was so off and weird that you kinda needed it to be slow so you could see just how many people weren't being normal and stuff. I think the slow pace helped the suspense and mystery too.
This is definitely the best film I've seen so far this year! Just ticked so many boxes and I wanted more and I didn't want it to end!
Should I be worried that I enjoyed such a psychopathic story so much? xD
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Overall: The best movie I've seen ALL year! << so far at least. It was suspensful, I felt creeped out the entire time, everyone is off, something just isn't right the entire time! While it's definitely SLOW paced, it messes with your head and the mystery keeps you entertained! Just wish we'd had a bit more explanation here and there.
Rating: 9/10!
Before going into it, I had see the poster, knew who was in it and wanted to see it based on the posters feel and the actors. Cos who would pass up a chance to see Nishijima Hidetoshi and Kagawa Teruyuki together! They are the perfect duo! Mozu, Double Face, Ryuusei Wagon and now this!! These two seriously. So yes, I went in not knowing a lot and oh boy oh boy, I was not prepared.
The movie is essentially a running theme of 'The Perfect Psychopath' and after an icident last year, Nishijima's decided to leave his cop job and join a university as a criminalist (is that the name?) lecturer and has moved into a new neighbourhood where both their neighbours are weird. And I mean weird.
This entire movie is weird! Seriously, there's something wrong and off with everyone except Nishijima's character himself. Seriously, just seeing everyone not being quite 'normal' is one thing that starts to play in your heard. Another thing that plays in your head is the main killer Nishijima is looking for. He's looking into a disappearnace case from 6 years prior and therefore trying to find what happened; eventually bodies are found; and thus he tries to find out who killed them.
There's one scene where he invites the only direct living relative from the disappearance case and he asks her to recall the last time she saw her family and how they'd been acting. And the scene begins with normal natural lighting and it's all light and airy and then as she talks, the lights get darker and it's almost like she's telling her story in the dark and then as she stops recalling, it all gets bright and light again. I was so fucking impressed with the lighting changes in this scene, and I'd PAY for them to tell and show me how they did it; I can't decide if it was CG lighting edits or they actually changed the lighting on the set as she spoke. I wanna know!
So anyway, Nishijima is trying to figure out this case and who the murderer is and while this is happening his next door neighbour Kagawa is weird as fuck and his mood shifts SO quickly and then his daughter confessions to Nishijima 'he's not my father' and omg it really starts playing on your mind and you just have to keep watching and need to know more! Especially when Nishijima's wife starts to get cornered by Kagawa but we never see what they're talking about and she's slowly degenerating and closing down. Omg it's seriously mental.
The only parts I didn't like were, 'at one point does a cop get SO deep into a murderer's dungeon and NOT decide to run and call for back up' three times cops went in and instead of calling for backup as SOON as something is clearly off, they fucking go in and get themselves killed! WTF?! Those cops deserved to be killed if they're gunna do that!
Another negative was about halfway through we are shown how the murderer kills his victims and as the audience we are pretty told how he works and how he's gotten away with it etc. and I kinda wish it'd been more of a 'we learn about the murderer, the same time Nishijima discovers and learns about the murderer'. I feel it took the mystery and some of the entertainment away once we knew everything but Nishijima still didn't. But this was still suspenseful as fuck! I jumped so many fucking times cos I was SO into it, I didn't see things coming (I didn't even think to predict which proves how much I was concentrating on this).
The last negative was the ending; the murderer got his come-uppance which is great BUT seeing Nishijima's wife switch back from her docile state to normal as soon as his dead. I didn't understand it. Had she told her husband and they'd decided on this plan together in order to corner Kagawa? Or was she just doing it all to save herself from being killed. I kinda think it's the former idea cos Nishijima isn't that shocked when she's suddenly back to being normal.
I was so emotionally and mentalling drained from this movie. I was on the edge of my seat. My brain was running with ideas of who did it and how they did it and the suspense had me crapping myself. And this movie is actually a VERY slow movie, but I think it worked perfectly because everything was so off and weird that you kinda needed it to be slow so you could see just how many people weren't being normal and stuff. I think the slow pace helped the suspense and mystery too.
This is definitely the best film I've seen so far this year! Just ticked so many boxes and I wanted more and I didn't want it to end!
Should I be worried that I enjoyed such a psychopathic story so much? xD
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Overall: The best movie I've seen ALL year! << so far at least. It was suspensful, I felt creeped out the entire time, everyone is off, something just isn't right the entire time! While it's definitely SLOW paced, it messes with your head and the mystery keeps you entertained! Just wish we'd had a bit more explanation here and there.
Rating: 9/10!