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Creepy (2016)

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Posted on December 7, 2016 by Deni

It’s not that I live on a diet of serial killer movies and thriller novels. I did read Silence of the Lambs once, so I would never consider myself an expert, but for some reason – maybe the title, or maybe the fact that plenty of other Kiyoshi Kurosawa films (like Retribution and Real to name just a couple) have been fairly hair-raising – I did in all honesty expect this 2016 murder thriller Creepy to be far creepier. … (read more)

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Real (2013)

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Posted on October 20, 2013 by Deni

Reminiscent of a Shinya Tsukimoto film, where reality is not always quite as stable as one would like, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Real similarly deals with the delineations between reality and fantasy, and subsequently life and death. Mildly creepy, this somnambulistic thriller packs a few small punches but for the most part fails to get its heart rate above resting.

Koichi (Takeru Satô, Rurouni Kenshin) is a young man with a girlfriend in a coma. All Smiths song references aside, he’s … (read more)

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Pulse (2001)

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Posted on March 11, 2007 by Alan

I’m gonna start this review with a little literary diversion. Sometime fantasist John Crowley wrote a book a few years back entitled Aegypt. The title was a deliberate displacement, taking an archaic spelling of Egypt and infusing that name with a mythic, alternate reality. By the same token the film Pulse is also known as Kairo.

Now this is not a deliberate thing, of course, Kairo being Japanese for ‘circuit’ — bear with me here — but it … (read more)

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Bright Future (2003)

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Posted on July 28, 2004 by Alison

Everyone needs a goal in life, and that of Mamoru (played by the very tasty Asano Tadanobu) is to adapt his red medusa jellyfish to fresh water and set it free. A lovely goal, except for the fact that the things are highly poisonous, and he wants to liberate his in the waterways of Tokyo.

But despite what the director says, this is not a monster film. There are no giant red jellyfish lurching out of the canals to menace … (read more)

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