Takashi Shimizu's REINCARNATION

Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald

This is one creepy movie! Unlike more formulaic Japanese horror movies that rely too heavily on generic horror and ghost themes, this one really delivers, despite a story that sounds hopelessly generic.

What it’s about: a movie crew sets up shop in an abandoned remote hotel to recreate via film a mass murder that occurred there decades before. Among the crew is a young actress whose sense of premonition becomes increasingly intrusive as filming proceeds. Is the hotel really haunted, or is she just nuts?

I know it sounds run-of-the-mill, but the story is told in overlapping flashbacks that eventually converge after a series of really unsettling and hair-raising sequences.

And it’s long, perhaps too long for audiences more impatient to “cut to the chase.” But if you look a good scary movie that builds, where the director knows how to create tension while building to a climax, this one fits the bill.

Review copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald