Seance

The Sixth Sense and A Simple Plan by way of Martin Heidegger, this genre-bending thriller is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Katsuhiko (Koji Yakusho) is a mild-mannered sound-technician who is married to Junco (Jun Fubuki).

While at first glance Junco seems to be an average hausfrau, she possesses great clairvoyant powers.

Though she has slowly and quietly built a reputation as a medium, she proves to be completely incapable of working in a normal service industry job; she has the unfortunately tendency of being able to see the crimes of her patrons. Katsuhiko is aware of her unusual abilities but prefers to think of her as "normal."

Young psychology graduate student Hayakawa (Teuyoshi Kusanagi) invites Junco to join his study on the paranormal. At the same time, the police are desperately searching for a young girl who was kidnapped by an ex-cop turned pervert.

At Hayakawa's behest, the cops consult with Junco as to the child's whereabouts. Ironically enough, the girl escapes her captor and takes refuge in Katsuhiko's equipment case while he records sounds in the mountains.

The next day, Junco's psychic sonar goes off and she discovers the missing child in their garage. This freak happenstance awakens a long-dormant ambition in Junco: convinced that her discovery was not a striking enough find, she hatches an ill-conceived scheme to make it seem more dramatic. While Katsuhiko tends to the unconscious girl, Junco scatters clues throughout the western suburbs of Tokyo and then informs the police of her psychic "insights."

As the film progresses, their plan goes awry and the child meets a bad end. Junco's abilities boomerang on her, and soon she and Katsuhiko are haunted by the ghost of the girl. Noted stars Yukari Ishida and Show Aikawa make cameos. This film was screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.

I am a great fan of Kurosawa's movies, yet I find this film a weak shadow of his usual work. I think this comes in large measure from his own statement that this film is a combination of a horror movie combined with a crime movie and the original 1960s story. It seems just too convoluted to succeed. On top of that, he claims that there were numerous rewritings of the 1960s story to fit it into the real world, whatever that means. The Left Elbow Index considers seven elements in film--acting, production sets, dialogue, plot, film continuity, character development, and artistry--on a scale from 10 for very good to 5 for average and to 1 for it needs some help. The acting, production sets, and dialogue are all rated average. The acting seems stilted and seems better timed to fit a soap. The production sets appear to be little more than what one sees in one's daily environs. And the dialogue seems to fit modern life, no great philosophies and no great blunders. The plot is rated weak since it appears difficult to sort out important elements of plot from trivial events in the film. The elements of plot and the emotional level of the film seem not to fit together well, even the suspense scenes appear hollow. The film continuity appears upset by the episodic TV nature of the juxtaposition of scenes, which seems to present too much clutter. I wonder why film makers tend towards putting characters in autos and driving them in and out of scenes, like Roy Rogers cowboy movies. We know how Roy got to and from where ever he was going, must he always be seen jumping on and off Trigger? There seems little character development to speak of, probably because the characters do not appear to be in a suspense, a horror story, or the real world. The artistry is rated as average, keeping in mind that average for Kurosawa is excellent for others. The close-ups are good and there are some interesting camera angles. The Left Elbow Index average is 3.3, up to a 5.0 when equated with the IMDb scale. The film is worth seeing, as any of Kurosawa's work is, but don't expect the master at his best.

This movie should not be seen as a straightforward ghost movie, nor as a basic series of set-ups, struggles and resolutions. It is a gripping movie, masterfully shot, bleak in its vision yet assembled with an inspiring meticulousness.

Junco is a psychic who feels trapped by her extra-sensory powers in more than one way. For one, she cannot hold a regular job, despite her best efforts. She is also aware that her gift will never be completely understood or taken seriously by the public at large, not even by those who seek her help.

When a freak coincidence lands a missing girl in her husband Katsuhiko's hardware case - after the police, as a last resort, has asked for her advice about the case - she sees it as a possible opportunity to make a name for herself as a serious and respected psychic, while clearing her husband and her of any responsibility in the girl's disappearance. She sees a way out the couple's humdrum, boring life, and her husband wants to believe it too. Needless to say, not much goes according to plan.

**NOTE** About the doppelganger appearing in the movie, as mentionned in a comment below. The double does represent impending death for Katsuhiko. The decision to have him burn his double alive was a way to show how he is not willing to accept a fate he has not chosen.

My first movie at Viennale'2000 and it is this one! I have never seen it before and therefore didn't know anything about it, but I have never expected to see something wonderful like this.

In it's 95 minutes running time I was thrilled, there wasn't a single minute when I was bored, or distracted. The main actors played really great and the whole ambiente of the movie set was excellent.

Sure he used a bit "6th sense", as you can see the breath and the dead people, but IMO it's much better than the 6th sense!

If you can watch this movie, do it! Don't wait, don't hesitate, it's absolute worth the time!

Overall, this movie (and Cure for that matter) is nicely done. With Seance, appropriately, a lot of negative space mise-en-scene was deftly carried out; with Cure, narrative as well as formal (eg spliced split-second frames, abrupt scene cuts etc) ellipses are done well with good editing. I liked the continuity of both the protagonist and the restaurant (albeit from a different shooting angle) through both films. My only problem with it (and Cure) is that sometimes the aesthetics feels contrived, and the understatement/'minimalism' is, ironically, overwrought & cliché. There's no greatness here (in terms of psychological horror/terror, there are much more genius auteurs in both the East and West, eg the 'other' Kurosawa's Rashomon and Polanski's earlier films, to name a few respectively), but it has thought, and is still better than 90% of the sh*t out there.