Re/Member

My husband and I thought it was absolute pants, we both enjoy horror and the story line was intriguing, but my goodness was it so badly done! It barely kept your attention even during the "intense" scenes, the characters and dialogue were appalling "hey we're hiding from a monster who is close by and will rip us apart so now's the time to start laughing and chatting" there is no trauma or stress particularly during the day where you would expect them to be somewhat traumatised from the night before, but nope just laughter and friendly bonding. By the end you are indifferent if the monster wins due to the amount of cliched moves and illogical decisions done by the characters who you don't care about due to their lack of character development and unrealistic portrayal of 6 teens stuck in an endless loop of being killed.

Sitting down to watch the 2022 Japanese horror movie "Re/Member" here in 2023, I did so without ever having heard about the movie. But the Japanese cinema have a long track record of making enjoyable and entertaining horror movies, so I figured that I would give it a go.

Writers Harumi Doki, Katsutoshi Murase and Welzard put together a fair enough script and storyline for director Eiichirô Hasumi to bring to the screen. The movie was watchable and entertaining for what it was, but it wasn't a groundbreaking story. And what really made the movie all the more watchable was the ferocity of the red creature. It is rare that you get to see that kind of rage and malevolence from creatures in movies, so that was quite enjoyable.

The acting performances in the movie were fair. I wasn't familiar with a single actress or actor on the cast list, but they put on good performances.

Visually then "Re/Member" was fairly okay. The special effects were good enough for the movie, but hardly outstanding. But it was refreshing to have a Japanese 'ghost' movie without the traditional girl in white dress with long, black hair covering the face.

Something did puzzle me, though, as it was funny how there happened to be a coffin with the exact beveled shape of the corpse of the little girl whose body parts the students were searching for. It just made so little sense.

"Re/Member" was watchable for what it was, and it is suitable for a single viewing. However, there just wasn't sufficient contents to the storyline to support more than a single viewing.

My rating of "Re/Member" lands on a five out of ten stars.

The premise wasn't anything new, but I wasn't looking for any ground breaking originality. It had a story, so simply tell it in an interesting and entertaining way, and I would've been happy. And, there were definitely good bits to it! So, it could have easily been a fine, enjoyable horror flick, but certain unnecessities like having an internal "I've had enough, so I'm gonna be courageous, ganbarimasu" emotion doesn't just give you an extra boost of power/energy, turning you into a superhero, and allowing you to overcome any obstacle infront of you. Yes, I've heard of adrenaline, but it shouldn't take long to kick in, certainly not a "John Snow standing in the battlefield" moment to doubt yourself, then suddenly thinking of your friends generates the super soldier serum within you" long.

After what seems to be a normal day, a group of students at a Japanese high school find themselves suddenly trapped in a never-ending time-loop by a malicious ghost intent on tormenting them and must find the cause of the curse that's affecting them to break the deadly chain of events.

On the whole, this one has quite a lot to like about it. Among the more likable facets present is the fine storyline that manages to bring about a genuinely terrifying concept. The main point of the film is the engrossing game that's at the center of everything which has a fun urban legend idea taken to a grand extreme. With the whole thing starting with the ghost appearing to the main girl and urging her into finding the various body parts of her dismembered corpse scattered around the school, things take a pretty chilling turn quite quickly. This is only enhanced by the means through which the group goes about getting inducted into the game of following through on the quest within the darkened school which easily manages to fall under the type of easily-digestible urban legend rather nicely. The means through which they find themselves stuck in a time loop as a consequence makes for a fine time as well and gives this a solid bit of tension to ensure the game is played. With this setup in place, this one manages to come off rather nicely with its ghostly encounters. The initial sight of the ghost is genuinely terrifying with the scarred face, blood-covered appearance, and association with the creepy doll leading to a fantastic first appearance in the prologue that sets everything in motion. The later scenes with the massive figure towering over the group while hunting them down through the school grounds and hallways is just as much fun with the incorporation of group battles against the massive being which signals the start of a secondary twist in the storyline that's introduced naturally while adding a nice bit of spice to everything. This adds plenty of frenetic action in the second half where the battle to stop the ghost takes place alongside the intriguing means of finally enacting the means of stopping the curse as well as the wholly effective practical effects for the main ghost-form shown here. These factors manage to provide a lot to enjoy here. There are some flaws with the film that hold it down. One of the bigger detriments is the highly underwhelming pacing that highlights a slew of teen-friendly content at the expense of genre thrills. With the group well-aware of the game to be played, a run-through of the body-finding tactics in the hallways is soaked up as a music video montage taking each encounter with the ghost as a single split-screen shot at once while an obnoxious pop song plays over it. This completely destroys any and all attempts at scares despite the horrific ways the ghost destroys the group and mutilates their bodies during the sequence. Other scenes like the group hanging out in the classroom laughing about dying the previous night or enjoying a beach party also manage the same feat of appealing to the teen crowd while dragging the tempo down and lacking in genre thrills. The last flaw here is the generally tame tone featured, with very little on-screen blood or gore and a reliance on cheap jump-scares which continue the teen feel and hold this one back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

I'm unfamiliar with the manga, but I trust that some of the issues I readily see here are problems of cinematic adaptation, and not of the original material. Early exposition is messy, and from the time the first "body search" begins, the horror violence is often defined by overly swift pacing that dampens the intended effect. Other issues are possibly less exclusively tied to the adaptation, however, such as the strangely unsubtle and forthright writing, most of all the plot development. More than that, where the horror and violence is concerned, I wonder if Murase Katsutoshi and Welzard are just as much to blame as screenwriter Doki Harumi, and filmmaker Hasumi Eiichiro, for throwing too much at us. Some storytellers, and filmmakers really need to learn the lesson of "less is more" - we're shown such a cavalcade of blood, gore, and would-be creepy imagery that we exceed saturation, and the intended effect of it all is again diminished.

Still more concerning is that the writing is very much an altogether mixed bag. It's possible that this, too, can be chalked up to the adaptation, but I wonder if it's not the case that the cinematic treatment only serves to exacerbate matters already seen in the manga. For one thing, the plot just seems forced and contrived as six classmates (supposedly one grouping of countless many) are supernaturally shanghaied into a grisly time loop. We just have to take it on faith, and accept that this is a work of dark fantasy in which Things Happen because the plot requires them to happen, and not because any specifically grand, compelling story is to unfold. Driving a bit more toward a major overarching difficulty, the characterizations and even some imagery in general are exaggerated or cartoonish in a manner that befits a more wry or lighthearted variety of narrative in manga or anime, but not necessarily one defined by brutal violence and death in a live-action style.

And that brings us to the biggest fault I find in these 100-odd minutes: it is all over the place in terms of its tone. There are scenes that lean heavily into the horror-thriller vibes and which are, to varying degrees, successfully horrifying, and there are scenes straight out of a comedy-drama about six disparate individuals coming together as friends and living their best lives. There are moments of wry, rousing humor - think a much bloodier, gorier iteration of 'Happy Death Day' as our characters try, try again and die, die again - and there is heartfelt earnestness. There are beats of inspiration, and beats of outrageous, violent resplendence fit for the wildest of genre romps and monster flicks. All these facets may be reasonable enough to come together in one tale, but in discrete, calculated measures. Here there is imbalance as the tones come and go, and one rather experiences whiplash. The sum total is cohesive in terms of its narrative, but the mood swerves in a manner that's sorrily unsteady and almost parodical. Maybe the episodic nature of manga, and anime, means that in these other formats, 'Re/member,' also known as 'Body search' or 'Karada saraki' (also transliterated as 'Karadasagashi') moves more smoothly and convincingly from one tenor to another. Then again, maybe it also suffers, and the doing here is just flagrantly worse. Without a point of reference, I don't know. But it's very plainly the most substantial issue facing this film, making my favor take a huge dip.

There are certainly others, too, like the overabundance of computer-generated imagery - almost always looking worse the more we see of it, across the whole medium - when practical effects and tangible creations could have been employed instead. Since we do, in fact, also get practical effects, the reliance on CGI is a little unfortunate. Still, in most all other regards the movie is well made by all the standards of the 2020s. A swell cast gives excellent performances. The production design and art direction are filled with terrific details, and much the same goes for the costume design, hair, and makeup. For the most part the CGI looks quite good despite the surfeit, practical stunts and effects are most welcome, and the creature designs are a blast. I admire Ichitsubo Yusuke's cinematography, and Kaneda Masayoshi's editing; the fundamental image is pristine and the sound design is healthy and robust. I rather love Kanno Yugo's dramatic, dynamic score, adeptly meeting the needs of any given scene and definitely adding to the atmosphere of the horror. And speaking of music: it was thanks to the inclusion on the soundtrack of two songs by young pop sensation Ado that I first found this title in the first place. While the particular usage herein of "Rebellion" regrettably adds to the tonal troubles, it's a terrific song in and of itself, and likewise "Missing" which appears over the end credits. Between Kanno and Ado, the music is unquestionably a highlight here if you ask me.

Why, I'll go further and say that despite the criticism I've leveled, I do appreciate what Doki and Hasumi achieved in terms of adapting the manga. One doesn't need to read much about the original works to understand that the writer and director have taken broad concepts and smaller ideas and shaped them into a new form that honors it while doing something a little different. By no means am I discounting the challenge of writing, or film-making, or of adaptation. It's just too bad that for all there is to praise and enjoy here - and it is enjoyable - and for as well made as it is, its weaknesses do much to weigh down the viewing experience. On the one hand I want to like it more than I do; on the other hand, I struggle to be more outwardly enthusiastic, and maybe I'm being too generous. I'm glad for those who get more out of 'Re/member' than I do; it remains worthwhile on its own merits, and surely more so if one has a special impetus to watch. It's just that the demerits I recognize are at least as prominent as the value to be claimed, so any recommendation the picture might earn is a soft one.