Film Review: Reincarnation (2005)
There is a a somewhat disappointing effort from the creator of THE GRUDGE. The screenplay has an intriguing premise; however, director and co-writer Takashi Shimizu’s strength has never been for narrative but for effortlessly spinning endless spooky vignettes tied together only by a central idea. As a result, REINCARNATION’s attempt to build suspense over the course of an hour-and-a-half feels tired and listless, with long narrative and expository sequences that do an adequate job of telling the story but fail to deliver thrills - or even the anticipation of thrills to come.
Fortunately, Shimizu’s prodigious talent as a scare-master are still on display, so the film features a handful of virtuoso sequences. He also continues his visual games (seen in the latter JU-ON films and THE GRUDGE) of inter-cutting past and present in a dream-like way that keeps the audience guessing abou what’s really happening. The result is not always terrifying, but it is fascinating to watch, particularly the film’s extended climactic highlight.
The story is about a film crew making a horror movie based on a real life incident wherein a professor went mad and killed several people in a hotel, including his family and himself. Decades later, the movie apparently stirs up the ghosts of the vengeful dead, some or all of whom have reincarnated during the interim. As the crew begins shooting on a set that is an exact duplicate of the now-closed hotel, the lead actress (played by the one-named Yuka) visualizes, as if in a trance, the recreation of the action turing into the real thing. Simultaneously, her agent is watching an old 8mm film of the actual murders. To top it all off, another woman is visiting the actual hotel, where the reincarnated souls return like shuffling zombies, re-enacting their deaths. The three levels of action, which eventually intertwine, are beautifully intercut and even pay off in a nice twist ending regarding who, exactly, is a reincarnation of whom.
Despite its narrative laxity, REINCARNATION does have one or two points of interest on a thematic level. The story seems to be making some kind of meta-statement about the J-Horror genre, vis-a-vis the film-within-a-film, which (according to the script) is supposed to be a recreation of real-life tragedy. A college professor (played by PULSE’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa) dismisses reincarnation and other psychic phenomena in a lecture, but it is clear that these beliefs suffuse the culture, including most of the characters. At one point, the on-screen director tells us his goal is to put the restless spirits at peace. REINCARNATION suggests that Japanese horror films are evocations of shared cultural beliefs, something akin to a religious ritual that can exorcise troublesome ghosts, be they real or psychological. In short, cinematic horror in Japan is not just throwaway entertainment, meant to thrill and be forgotten; it’s meant to resonate with the power we normally ascribe to well-known myths and legends, which seem to speak seriously to our hearts and souls, becoming an important part of the richness of our psychological lives.
Unfortunately, REINCARNATION itself fails achieve this goal; emerging as something of a counter-argument to its own premise, it is simply a modestly entertaining genre item, not a classic that stirs the soul. Nevertheless, it does have pleasures worth experiencing, at least for fans of the J-Horror genre. If the movie at times seems like a weak repeat of THE SHINING (with a teacher murdering his family and the ghosts of a hotel’s victims coming to life), Shimizu does give it a uniqutely Japanese spin that lends it some small distinction. It may not live up to the level of Shimizu’s earlier work, but it is an ambitious attempt expand upon an already impressive body of work.
TRIVIA
In the film’s haunted hotel, a room with the number 227 is prominentaly featured - an obvious homage to the infamous room 237 in Stanley Kubrick’s film version of THE SHINING.
REINCARNATION (”Rinne,” 2005). Directed by Takshi Shimizu. Written by Takashi Shimizu & Masaki Adachi. Cast: Yuka, Karina, Kippei Shiina, Tetta Sugimoto, Shun Oguri, Marika Matsumoto, Mantaro Koichi, Atsushi Haruta.
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[...] less successful THE GRUDGE 2. Shimizu also directed the interesting though slightly disapointing REINCARNATIONÂ and the off-beat horror flick MAREBITO. You can read an interview with him [...]