my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Nightmare Detective
Director:   Shinya Tsukamoto
Year:   2006
Genre:   Horror
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   10.26.06

Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- Haze
- A Snake of June

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
10.26.06Bullock IMAXThis Screening is part of event: Austin Film Festival 2006
For the last film of the fest, I decided to fit this recently-announced film in before Terror Thursday.

I think this screening was hurt by the venue. IMAX is great for IMAX films, but for blow-ups of Japanese Horror movies, especially those of Shinya Tsukamoto, it's dangerous. In this case, there was so much goddamned shaking and handheld photography that I was noxious by the end, having to close my eyes every minute or so to keep my head on straight. It doesn't help that the whole movie depends on that shakycam barely-see-whatever's-there "technique" to bring any sort of horror... something I hate even on my crappy small TV at home.

The story is about... I guess some guy is getting into other people's dreams and killing them, making it look like suicide. So this psychic is brought in to help. Except the psychic's not in most of the movie. They bring him in at the very end. Before that it's just cops looking at crime scenes and the same thing happening three or four times in a row. It's a shame too. If they'd only seen other movies Shinya Tsukamoto's been in they could've just looked for him and assumed he's the weirdo killer. I'm not a real specialist when it comes to Japanese horror, but I know I have seen like 5 movies with him either acting or acting and directing and in every one he plays the villain. I'd think by now he'd be on the quick-dial for cops. "ooh someone died in a weirdo freaky potentially-supernatural way, it's time to call Tsukamoto." I guess since this is his movie he gets to pretend like everyone doesn't already know it's him and has to, you know, find out at the end in some vague explanation that makes no sense. Great.

So lots of people walked out of this one. I'm not sure if it was due to boredom or nausea though. It also had 15 endings... but I think that's because time was running out to get to Terror Thursday so I just wanted it to end.

So that's the festival. Biggest highlight was probably Rescue Dawn and Tenacious D. Biggest grumble was the ongoing and consistent projection issues with nearly every film I saw. But oh well.