Now I liked the previous film this director made called "The Chaser". Because it has a simple premise that delved into humanity but kept me thinking. And by the end it really did stick with me when I first saw it. This one tries to outdo that film by trying to add bunch of imagery and symbolisms. By meshing a lot of elements the director borrowed from other films that are left ambiguous. But the thing is the narrative isn't up to par and tries to be bigger than what it is. I could tell what the director of this film was trying to do. To keep the audiences guessing and leave things a bit complex. So by the end of it they will be in awe with what is going on and keep them talking about exactly what happened. Now I appreciate director's that don't spoon feed you everything that is going on. It works if the film flows with it's narrative, but this just seemed more complex for the sake of being complex. Like he was trying to make things a bit more ambiguous for the audiences and leave it up to the viewers to comprehend what is going on. Which works in films if everything flows together and isn't forced. But it's like the director took a simple story and made it more complex than it really is and added bunch of imagery and symbolism. So the plot takes plays in a country side rural village. Where weird things start to go down with some of the villagers acting very strangely, saying vile things and becoming zombie like. They think some old Japanese guy is the source of what is going on. When one of the police officers start to look to be possessed they hire a shaman. And thing start to get even more crazy from there on. The thing about this movie is that it's overlong and I think it could have been shortened down to about 2 hours and cut 30 minutes of it out. Because the build up is actually quite boring and things start to get a bit interesting and escalate the tension after one and a half hours in. Which is actually quite long to get to the meat of the movie. I will admit few of the symbolisms and how it comes together is actually quite neat. But as a whole the film seemed to suffer from the issue that arises from the storytelling aspect of things. Overall, it did have some good points with few of the symbolism and re-watching it may clarify certain things but I really don't want to.
6/10
6/10