Nightmare Detective / Akumu tantei (2006)

We first meet Kagenuma, the Nightmare Detective (Ryuhei Matsuda), with an in joke about J-Horror itself. He has entered the nightmares of Oishi, an old man who keeps a long black wig on the wall and seems to be haunted by it. Kagenuma explains the nightmares, but Oishi prefers to stay in the dream world …

Vital (2004)

The story in Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital is quite simple: A medical student Hiroshi is involved in a car crash which kills his girlfriend Ryoko. When he at last returns to medical school, his dissection class several years later finds him working on a body that will eventually turn out to be that of his girlfriend. …

Snake of June / Rokugatsu no hebi (2003*)

Some movies you watch and some movies you experience; despite being visually one of the most tightly and carefully crafted movies of all time, Shinya Tsukamoto's A Snake of June is a movie you experience. In a remarkable characterization by Asuka Kurosawa, Rinko seems to be a well-adjusted woman in her thirties. She works as …

Drowning Man / Oboreru hito (2001)

IMDB lists Drowning Man as a horror movie, but it is far from that. A salaryman Tokio finds his wife Kumiko has drowned in the bath. He brings her to the sofa and tries to revive her, but he does not call an ambulance. After drinking himself into a stupor, he wakes to find she …

Bullet Ballet (1998)

After a viewing of Tetsuo the Iron Man, I had mentally written off Shinya Tsukamoto as just another of the Japanese extremists portraying absurd violence for its own sake. Then Bullet Ballet showed up in a box set of movies by others of this genre and I realized that I would have to think again. …