Nightmare Detective
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| Nightmare Detective | |
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| Directed by | Shinya Tsukamoto |
| Produced by | Takuji Ushiyama |
| Written by | Shinya Tsukamoto |
| Starring | Ryuhei Matsuda Ren Osugi hitomi Masanobu Ando |
| Music by | Chu Ishikawa Tadashi Ishikawa |
| Cinematography | Shinya Tsukamoto |
| Editing by | Shinya Tsukamoto |
| Distributed by | Movie-Eye Entertainment Inc. |
| Running time | 106 min |
| Language | Japanese |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Nightmare Detective ( 悪夢探偵 Akumu Tantei?) is a 2007 Japanese film directed by Shinya Tsukamoto and released by Movie-Eye Entertainment Inc, starring Ryuhei Matsuda and hitomi. Masanobu Ando and Ren Osugi play supporting roles, and Tsukamoto himself plays the unnamed villain. The film is shot entirely within the Adachi special ward of Tokyo, Japan.
Nightmare Detective 2, which began filming in July, is set to be released in 2008. Matsuda will return in the lead role of Kagenuma. hitomi declined to reprise her role, but footage of her character from the first film will be used as brief flashbacks in the sequel. [1]
[edit] Story outline
The film opens with a middle-aged man entering an apartment, sitting on a mat, and taking a drink of beer. As he is drinking, a young man (Matsuda) appears from under a large black coat on the floor, and talks to the middle-aged man; through their exchange, filmed in an overwhelmingly greyish setting, it is revealed that the young man is named Kagenuma and the middle-aged man, Mitake, is a former teacher of Kagenuma's father. Kagenuma tells Mitake that he has found out what it is that is haunting him - it is the soul of a daughter he never knew he had, which his wife had aborted without his knowledge. Mitake is grateful to receive this information, but when Kagenuma asks him to 'come back' with him, he refuses, despite Kagenuma's pleas that Mitake's refusal would 'make it difficult for him', and tells Kagenuma to 'go back' alone, since it is apparently dangerous for Kagenuma to 'stay too long' where they are.
Kagenuma is eventually compelled to leave the place without Mitake, is shown moving unconsciously through a liquid medium - and wakes up in a hospital ward in 'the real world', next to the bedridden, comatose body of Mitake, and surrounded by Mitake's children. It is then revealed that Kagenuma had been meeting with Mitake in Mitake's dream, and it was Mitake's oldest son who had hired him to enter their father's dream, with the explicit mission of finding out who is to inherit their father's properties (Mitake has presumably been declared brain dead and is about to be taken off life support). When Kagenuma does not provide a satisfactory answer, he is given some money (but declines it) and told to leave the ward immediately. As he leaves, Kagenuma telepathically hears the selfish thoughts of Mitake's children, and realises that a messy legal battle is about to commence over Mitake's properties. Abruptly, the faces of Mitake's children begin to twist and be distorted in Kagenuma's vision, and Kagenuma leaves the ward in horror and disgust.
Lieutenant Keiko Kirishima (hitomi), a police officer in her early thirties, has recently switched from working in criminology and graft cases at the National Police Academy to field detective work at a district police station. This is clearly a massive step-down in the eyes of her new colleagues, who do not understand why Kirishima, a graduate of the prestigious Tokyo University, and having completed many courses of in-service continuing education in various fields, both locally and abroad, was being groomed to be a senior officer, while their own careers were somewhat more dead-end in nature.
Puzzled about her decision, and somewhat resentful of her higher qualifications - in one dialogue, Wakamiya reminds veteran investigator Ishida that she is superior to them in rank and opines that she will not be 'merely their colleague' for too long, implying that she has been earmarked to eventually take over as their superior officer - Kirishima's colleagues are initially unsure about how to react to her. Kirishima's own prickly personality does not help matters; she has a tendency to immediately disagree with her colleagues, interprets her new colleagues' casualness at crime scenes (as a means of relieving tension) as a lack of professionalism, and misunderstands Ishida's advice about her choice of shoes as a condescending and sexist remark, and responds with a hostile answer.
Kirishima does not get off to a good start in both her new field of work, proving unable to stomach the gruesome scene in her first case. She also initially has a strained relationship with her new colleagues, primarily Detective Ishida (Ren Osugi) and Detective Wakamiya (Masanobu Ando). Ishida, a veteran, battle-hardened investigator, particularly mocks Kirishima's squeamishness, as well as her inflexibility - for example, Kirishima arrives for work at the police station wearing a short skirt and leather heels, which is her standard attire for work at the Academy, but is obviously unsuited for the duties of a detective in the field, which might involve actual confrontations with armed suspects. Ishida also derisively refers to Kirishima as "Princess", as an implication that she is accustomed to being pampered, as well as a backhanded acknowledgement of her beauty.
The younger Wakamiya is friendlier towards Kirishima, at one point advising Kirishima not to antagonize those 'who are on her side'. Kirishima eventually confides to him that she is socially inept. She does not socialise easily, is straight-talking to the point of being blunt, and lacks tact and sensitivity, leading to difficulties in getting along with the people around her. She also has an intense resentment of men with sexist attitudes, and opted to switch to detective work because she had become disenchanted with a career spent exclusively on investigating white-collar crimes.
Kirishima's first case is that of a young woman who has been found dead in her own apartment, horribly slashed with a blade placed in her own hand, with her blood splattered all over the walls and floor of her bedroom. The fact that the apartment was locked from the inside convinces Ishida and Wakamiya that the case is a suicide; Kirishima is not so sure, citing the facts that no note was left and a neighbour heard the victim crying out for help. A few days later, Kirishima's team is confronted by a similar case, except that there is now a witness; the wife of the victim, who saw her husband slash himself savagely in various parts of his body and eventually bleed to death, all while asleep in their bed beside her. Once again Kirishima is forced to flee the scene to vomit, though she is becoming slightly more experienced and seasoned; when she returns shortly after, Ishida derisively makes a sidelong reference to her, asking, "How is the Princess?", and Kirishima calmly answers, "She is fine. Thank you." Also shown in this scene is a change in the relationships of the investigators; Wakamiya, who had up to this point acted as Ishida's right-hand man, now begins deferring to Kirishima's rank and talent and reports his findings and hypotheses immediately to Kirishima instead, much to Ishida's annoyance, and Kirishima's bewilderment.
Kirishima discovers a link between the two otherwise completely unrelated victims; both had last dialled the same number, a sequence ending with 0 that is not registered anywhere in the country. It is suspected that the person that both victims have dialled has killed them both by some form of hypnotic suggestion, inducing them to kill themselves in their sleep. Because of the strange nature of the cases, the chief of the division separates the investigators into two groups. One, led by Detective Ishida, is to carry out 'the standard procedure', while the other, led by Lieutenant Kirishima (and including Detective Wakamiya), is to 'take the other route', an euphemism for investigating supernatural causes for the murders. This creates massive irritation and frustration for the incredulous and rationalistic Kirishima. A skeptic who does not believe in the supernatural and dismisses psychics, seances, out of body experiences as the like as nonsense, she is now duty bound to seek out experts in the occult for their advice. After some investigation, Kirishima and Wakamiya are directed to Kagenuma, who is described as a person with the power 'to come into people's dreams'.
[edit] References
- ^ [http://www.cinemacafe.net/movies/cgi/19734/ CinemaCafe.net Nightmare Detective Ⅱ article
[edit] External links
- Akumu Tantei at the Internet Movie Database
- (Japanese) Nightmare Detective - Official Website
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