I figure since Hollywood has redone another Japanese horror movie, I might as well review the original movie. "Kairo" means "pulse" in Japanese, and if you did not like the American version then please check out the Japanese. Done by master of J-horror Kiyoshi Kurosawa, this movie has great sequences that will scare you and in my estimation does a much better job of giving you goosebumps.
The story is basically the same as the American version, where a bunch of young internet users start seeing strange things happening on their computer, ghosts or what not, and people start dying by suicide. We have the girl main character, Michi, and the boy, Ryosuke, each see these strange things separately of each other. Michi sees it on her computer which redirects her to a site showing her co-worker, Tagachi, doing strange things. Ryosuke decides to buy a laptop and is immediately redirected to a website showing weird live feeds of depressed people. He gets freaked out and turns off his laptop, but it keeps powering itself on and going to the same site which asks "Do you want to meet a ghost?" So on and so forth. All of these people's acquaintances start committing suicide and leave little black marks behind, so what's the significance? We discover that ghosts are entering or dimension via technology because their dimension is now becoming overpopulated (too many ghosts and people!). A young girl and man try to figure out the mystery separately of each other and of course eventually find each other in order to figure out how to stop the influx of ghosts. But why are people committing suicide, ummm...because they want to meet a ghost? No seriously though Kurosawa is illustrating how technology has taken over our lives and from this we are all becoming less and less humans and are ghosts on the internet. How many of us have met people through the internet but never in real life? Kurosawa wants to show us how lonely the world is without human interaction but rather with the phantasms. He shows you the desolation and despair by creating an empty environment. The best part of this movie is the sound effects. Kairo is true to the genre psychological thriller, you hear faint whispers and echoes coming from your speakers and surrounding you saying “Tasukete†(which means save me in Japanese) and just the overall atmosphere of the movie is very bleak and depressing. Kiyoshi does not use the same horror tactics as Americans where we see the actors in the foreground always and the background is blurred out. No, everything is in sharp focus and we see everything, and we need to notice everything. The person jumping off a building in the background, a plane crashing, empty subways, etc all these are part of the setting and add to the eeriness. I think this is one thing that most Asian movies do better than American movies is that they make the environment more realistic and they are not going for some cheap scare, Kurosawa wants to make you think why this movie is frightening and show you the loneliness and isolation that can lead to suicide. His environments are real, here's just something very very wrong. Perhaps his other great work is Cure, I would recommend this movie to anyone.
The acting is decent, I also enjoy the fact that whoever cast the people did a good job of choosing people who look like regular Japanese folk rather than gorgeous actors. It makes the movie that more believable. Perhaps the only strange thing is the characters themselves who go places for no reason, like why go to a creepy basement for no reason? But then again, most movies are like that and rarely give explanations as to why the main character decides that the creepy, empty barn is a safe place to spend the night.
Much of Kurosawa's movies are also very dreamlike, making it hard to discern reality from fantasy, which, for me, lends to an even scarier viewing of the movie because, who knows what's real and what isn't? Isn't that what the main characters are trying to figure out? Again, Kurosawa just wants to mess with your heads, to get you in the same state as the people on your TV. Of course there are a lot of questions to be answered that the ending doesn't quite give you (although the explanation for the ghosts is quite satisfying). Like, how do the main characters know where to go? As far as the red tape, well I'll make up an explanation. From what I know, red and white is the color that a Miko wears. And since they basically guard shrines from evil spirits, you can figure that the red tape keeps away the ghosts. Red is also a symbol for happiness so perhaps using the red keeps away the despair that one might feel? I don't know, but those are some pretty good guesses.
Overall, this is one of the better J-horror movies out there and much scarier than the American version. There are no cheap thrills here, just a pure psychological thriller that will keep you thinking.
"Kairo" opens November 9, 2005 and is not rated. Horror. Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Starring Haruhiko Kato, Koyuki, Kumiko Aso, Kurume Arisaka, Masatoshi Matsuo.
