I went in completely blind... and I loved it. I do not know the source material, and I am admittedly not interested in anime or manga, but I have to say that this film entertained me through and through.
The beauty of the film rests on its simplicity. It is a modest yet lovely film. It doesn't try to dazzle you or to show off. The story is straight forward, yet it has a bit of intrigue and suspense. The acting is good. The shot composition and visual language is competent; yet every facet play with one another and it ends up enriching the film at every level.
We follow Rohan, who is a master sketch artist. He is also endowed with a power that allows him to freeze someone and be able to read their minds. As an artist, he is interested in colors, and so he sets out to find the blackest black imaginable, which the rumor suggest can only be seen on one cursed painting that has been lost for years.
So the first part of the film is a detective plot into the art world, that leads Rohan from an auction house to the maze-like basements of the Louvre. And all that is already pretty good. But then without (sufficient) warning, the film lays out a layer of Japanese horror-mysticism on you, and that is where is become its own unique thing. And it is wonderful. I gave me literal chills at times, but it never uses jump scares or music. It relies on story elements and character building to create situation which give you frights. A central theme of the film is that the blackest black painting is so black and evil that if you look at it you lose your mind. When the film decides to just focus on that black painting in the frame and zoom in ever so slowly, I was genuinely terrified.
Fear is psychological. In Jaws, we see the shark only in the last half-hour of the film. Here, we are watching a black screen. This film succeeds because it give us all the tools and information to fear that dark screen, that black void.
It is kinda the perfect Halloween movie.
