It follows a young woman named Setsuko Suma who must help solve a series of murders that are being carried out every monday at 6pm on young women. But the film is much more than just this mystery.
Setsuko is a lot like Will Graham from the Hannibal Series in that she has strong empathy and is able to get into the mind of a killer and as the film goes on the focus shifts more onto her and how the case among other things are affecting her psyche.
It's like the film is made up of two halves with the first hour being more about the mystery and the second hour focusing on the psychological stuff.
The other important character to note is Dr Rei Aku, a man with a sense of mytsery who always seems very calm and smug. He runs an anti-brainwashing clinic and at one point we see footage of his practices which serves to be one of the films main highlights.
It's these two characters and the phycological elements that are actually the most interesting parts of this film and that's the issues as altough it manages to stay quite intriguing throughout, it never manage to fully invest me and at times I could find my mind drifting away from the film.
It is very steadily paced and has quiet and subdued atmosphere which does work to a certain extent but also feels like it's more distancing the viewer rather than absorbing them as intended. The film actually borders the line of horror but never quite steps into it and if anything maybe one of it's problems is that never goes completely full on with its ideas.
There are also a few things that are never really explained that may cause some frustration and confusion especially since it doesn't all quite gel together well enough.
The Cinemtography is decent though if not completely remarkable aside a few good visual bits and the acting is fine too.
So there's certainly is some interesting sequences and stuff going on I just didn't think it was super enjoyable. I'm sure there are other people that will get much more from the film and if you like psychological films some mystery mixed in then it could be worth checking out just be cautious of it's pacing and atmosphere which could be off-putting and make it difficult to get into the movie.
This is the 3rd Gakuryu Ishii film I have seen thus far and I've had a similar experience with all of them, where all of them were intriguing but never fully gripped me. Maybe one day I'll find a film of his I really like, but for now this was still decent. ***
No comments:
Post a Comment