Director: Ataru Oikawa
Year: 1998
Country: Japan
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Troubled by her fragmented memory, a woman undergoing therapy for help in trying to remember everything finds herself drawn to a strange case involving multiple murders throughout several decades believed to be committed by a singular entity and must find the connection it has with her.
Review:
Overall, this was a fairly fun if convoluted genre effort. One of the better features here involves the stylish and extravagant lore established here as the mysterious incidents start to take shape. The initial rounds of the investigation into the strange deaths revealing the same pattern in a similar slew of times reported over the intervening time that all come with the same name starts to show them digging into the incidents going back hundreds of years further so there’s a fun launching pad for what’s to come involving the amnesiac art student. With the pattern emerging and all sorts of red flags are brought about with how she treats the past that she can’t recall much about or the series of interactions she has with her therapist that signal something more going on than just the usual cases of insomnia that she’s being treated for. Given that there are also some solid attempts at suspense in the strange interactions with the neighbor or the history with the character over the years coming together, there’s a generally solid story at work here.
This build-up comes across rather nicely when the pieces of her fragmented mind start coming together and the mystery about what’s happening starts to become repealed. As the whole situation involving the weird neighbor and her mysterious obsession with the object growing in the garden gets tacked onto the clues brought about by the detective involving the strange deaths taking place, the legacy of the character being an immortal demon-like creature looking to seduce and kill various men but being cursed to endure unwanted lust from numerous others around her that becomes her murder targets provides a slew of great encounters. This all comes together in a frantic finale featuring the truth about the strange object growing in a neighbor's apartment, the reveal of what fractured her memory, and the intentions of the strange woman said to be at the cause of it all leading to some decent action scenes and solid attempts at gore for an enjoyable enough time.
There are some issues with this one that do show up here. The main problem is the seemingly unending attempt at creating a moody dramatic piece than anything else, leaving many questions unanswered. The basic lore and premise of the demonic entity is never truly given other than the single-minded desire over a specific male so that a basic function of the creature isn’t established, much like how so many seem to fall head-over-heels for her when the other girls are somewhat more physically attractive so the premise is a bit difficult to swallow. The jumbled storyline takes a while to spell out as the therapy sessions, random interactions with fellow students trying to piece together what’s going on, and the investigation revealing the past tragedies come together in a dragged-out manner so everything takes a while to come together leaving many parts unanswered in favor of later questions appearing altogether. It’s also not helped by a slew of unnecessary elements being tacked on without much use that drags this out even further and all being the main drawbacks to this one.
Overview: ***/5
An intriguing if somewhat slow-going mess, there’s enough to like here that makes it worthwhile yet still has more than enough issues to keep it from being anything more than that overall. Those who appreciate this kind of genre effort or are curious about it will want to take a look at it while most others out there might want to heed caution in favor of other entries first.
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