NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE (2006)

Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
Written by Shinya Tsukamoto
Starring Hitomi, Ryuhei Matsuda and Shinya Tsukamoto

A couple of people are killed brutally but the cops first think it’s just suicide, but a new detective, Keiko Kirishima (Hitomi) on her first real case begins to think that these people were actually murdered after noticing that they both called the same number before they died. She begins to suspect that they were killed in their dreams and enlist the help of a Nightmare Detective to go in the dreams on her and her colleagues to help catch this maniac butcher before he kills anybody else.

As you can tell by the plot NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE does take a little bit from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and I can already hear all those Freddy fan boys getting all up in arms over this. To those people that would go around saying that they stole from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET I say sit down and shut up. All it really does is take the whole dieing in your dreams concept and take it in another and more interesting direction. For me I’m glad that the Japanese and Shinya Tsukamoto took this in the direction that they did instead of having American make yet another boring and shitty sequel or even worse, a remake of this very tired NIGHTMARE franchise.

I am sad to admit that this is the first movie that I’ve seen of Shinya Tsukamoto. Fellow Japanese film fans may recognize the name as the director of TETSUO and A SNAKE IN JUNE and others. I have pretty much all of his films on my to watch list already and after watching this one I’m going to have to go and move them up. Shinya does a fine job on this film as the director, writer, cinematographer, editor and producer. He certainly had his plate full on this film and pulls it all off greatly. Hell he even plays a part in the movie as 0, the bad guy of the movie.

People that hate shaky cam may be turned off by the camera movement in this film. The camera felt like it was always moving and I thought it helped to keep the movie going cause this one doesn’t seem to bog down or start off slow like a lot of Asian horror movies tend to do. I never really noticed the shaky cam till the nightmare scenes and you were looking from the killer’s P.O.V. then things got pretty crazy. And the nightmare scenes are pretty cool, I thought, watching the victims getting sliced and diced from some unseen force. Until later in the movie when we finally get to see what is really going on. And this was shot in a way that they make the redness of the blood really stand out.

Like I said earlier I didn’t think this movie started off slow or bog down as the kills start off pretty early in the movie and the pace seemed pretty evenly paced to me. And that is sometimes hard to say about J-horror and other Asian horror films, so you might and I hope you are as pleasantly surprised as I am.

The acting is all pretty decent. It is really kind of hard for me and perhaps American’s in general to properly judge Asian acting. Sometimes it feels like there is a lot of over acting but who knows, maybe that’s how they act over there, but there really wasn’t all of that overacting stuff in this movie and everyone does a decent job overall. Hitomi who plays the lead detective Keiko Kirishima does pretty good in this movie. They said in the “Making Of” feature that this was her first speaking role in a film. She’s also easy on the eyes, so that’s a nice plus.

Overall NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE is a well done and interesting film that I would pretty much recommend to anyone, especially the fans of J-horror. Of course there are still some of those “What the fuck” moments and the ending perhaps doesn’t make the best sense but it is a very enjoyable film in my opinion and one that I look forward to adding to my collection. Now I got to get off my ass and watch those other Shinya Tsukamoto movies.

8/10