adventures in netflixing: reincarnation

Takashi Shimizu’s 2005 Rinne (US Title: Reincarnation) is my first bona fide voyage into the scraggly black hair filled world of J-Horror. I’ve always suspected that I’d enjoy Japan’s creepiest — if I could work up the nerve to sit through a whole film without my eyes covered, and if I could find a film that embodied all the good things about J-Horror, rather than one of the myriad subsequent rip-offs.  In honor of Halloween, I decided to move Reincarnation to the top of my queue and hope for the best. 

Perhaps it was because I watched in the middle of the afternoon, or because I watched on my laptop, or because I had company, but Reincarnation isn’t incredibly scary. It’s better. It is all the things I’ve come to hope for in my encounters with Japanese cinema: it is moody, creepy, and brimming with images that stick with you for the rest of the day. Like peanut butter. Homicidal, voyeuristic peanut butter.

Shimizu (who also co-wrote the script and is best known in the states for directing Ringu) indulges in a little audience misdirection, a little creepy little girl action, and — the coup de grace — a terrifying doll. I’ve long proselytized on behalf of the Japanese classic, Kwaidan (1964), and was interested to see that a lot of the methods for telling ghost stories have stayed the same. CGI is only used a handful of times; for the most part, scares are achieved through the actual story, unfortunate make-up, and — best I can tell — strings (sidenote: is it just me or do Japanese ghosts have more in common with zombies than spectres?), 

Perhaps the cultural element best represented in Reincarnation is what I feel makes Japan better at horror: religion and heritage allow for belief in some pretty far out events.  While the US version of this film would have spent the first two-thirds with everyone thinking the main character is crazy for thinking she is the reincarnated spirit of a murdered girl, her Japanese peers accept it. Their reaction amounts to, “Yeah. So?” This leaves room for the movie to tell its story (the “So?” part), rather than build audience involvement through frustration. 

I would recommend this movie to anyone looking to see why America has spent the last 5-8 years ripping off J-Horror. It’s creepy, yes, but the scares aren’t cheap. Shimizu earns them. In a climate where the first fat to cut in a horror movie is character development, I actually cared about these characters, and the tragedy actually seemed tragic. I give this one a “well-played.”

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