Cynical Cinema

Nightmare Detective opens with a scene of a man sitting at a table. Behind him, on the wall, is some super-long, disembodied hair, hanging from a hook like a hat. It takes a while to notice the hair, but when you do, and you realize what it is, you become instantly creeped right out. And that feeling will not leave you until this film is over. It’s the latest offering from Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto, who has been called Japan’s answer to David Lynch or David Cronenberg. And that description is certainly apt. This man knows how to create a mood so creepy that even if nothing at all happens, the sense of foreboding resonates within the viewer. In Nightmare Detective, two things are constantly sources of fear and malice. Bridges and bicycles. They don’t sound so creepy thinking of them now, but these are the scariest bikes and bridges I’ve ever seen in a movie. And that includes that brilliant Emilio Estevez classic, Maximum Overdrive.

We are introduced to the Nightmare Detective almost immediately. You see, the guy with the hair on his wall is having a nightmare. And the Nightmare Detective is able to enter peoples’ dreams in order to explain them to those people, and perhaps they will not be so frightened. However, this man having this dream decides he would rather remain in the dream than wake up, and he chooses to die. This screws up Kyoichi Kagenuma, the Nightmare Detective. He has lost the will to live, after seeing so many scary and creepy things in his life. In fact, we are not sure he has ever had the will to live. And this ties in nicely with the theme of suicides. A series of incredibly brutal suicides have been taking place in the city. Each of the victims have stabbed themselves to death, in bloody and gory fashion, while having nightmares. And just before they do, they have all called the phone number “0″. Which I assume in Japan does not connect you with an operator.

Japanese horror movies love this kind of stuff. Something anyone could do - like playing a VHS tape in Ringu, or dialing 0 on a cell phone. Simple things that are accessible to regular people are scary when all of a sudden they become supernatural. It turns out that the guy at the other end of the phone sucks the people who call into suicide pacts with them, and has the supernatural ability to enter their dreams and go after them. Which is always creepy, scary and gory. The cops go after him, but anyone who calls him ends up committing suicide in their sleep. So they enlist the help of the Nightmare Detective, who is legitimately suicidal himself. The hot-chick cop who convinces him to help is played by Reiko Hitomi, one of the sexiest Japanese actresses in the world, but a relative newcomer to movies with international distribution. She eventually sets up the obvious Nightmare On Elm Street style showdown where she confronts the killer in her sleep, with help from the Nightmare Detective.

The final showdown, while it is obvious from the beginning, is bonkers and difficult to understand, and it goes on for a very long time. But somehow it works. After all, it is a nightmare, and all kinds of strange things can happen in a nightmare that don’t have to make sense. The fact that Tsukamoto is able to sustain terror and tense creepiness for a solid half-hour without making it tedious is a testament to his skill. Nightmare Detective is a solid, frightening horror film that is worth seeking out. It arrives in stores tomorrow, May 27th, from Alliance Films.