zetes I remember thinking the first Nightmare Detective was a pretty good film, but fairly conventional as far as the great Shinya Tsukamoto is concerned. This sequel is a huge improvement. Ryuhei Matsuda returns as the titular detective. He is recruited by a high school student (Yui Miura) to dissipate her nightmares, which are being haunted by a still living classmate whom she and her friends bullied. Matsuda finds similarities between the girl's problems and his own nightmares, which concern his mother (Miwako Ichikawa), who attempted to murder him twice before ending her own life. There is a great uneasiness to the picture: for one, thing, it's always quite ambiguous on whether we're in the real world or a dream. I think a good 90% of the film does take place in dreams. There are tons of frightening images, but Tsukamoto is incredibly subtle in his direction (I must say, though, I'm no fan of the hand-held, digital camera work). The film handles the emotions of Matsuda's past beautifully, and, in the end, the film is surprisingly moving.

chaos-rampant I'm usually wary of IMDb consensus but in this case I must agree, the sequel completely trumps the first Nightmare Detective. It's still very much Paprika made as a J-horror but Tsukamoto here is trying to reach outside of the comic book panel.Kiyoshi Kurosawa presented us in Kairo with the stage of a grand guignol theatre where the horror came from the dissolution of the self, but the horror was distant, observed from behind screens. Here, grief and horror flow from one another in a touching cause and effect. It's a jittery, vivid, film, and Tsukamoto's nervous camera makes sense in context, unlike the previous film.At least on one level, it's an easy film to like or dislike. It plays like a best-of showreel of archetypal J-horror moments, we know them almost by heart and they pose little challenge. If they work for the viewer elsewhere, they should work here too. If we find in J-horror a cinema of scares and foreboding, Nightmare Detective 2 is a scary film.Lesser directors like Shimizu and Nakata have been there, so what does Tsukamoto add to the heady brew? In a sense, the film works for me in how it eschews J-horror. Tsukamoto draws on broad ideas and explores them only in general directions, but it's that effort to reach from beyond the pale, the supernatural, back into what is essentially human about suffering that marks him separate.In Vital he asks where does the soul reside. Here he is confounded with human suffering, where does this war inside us come from. The abstractions of this he uses, two separate characters who are inexplicably mortified of life, are rather naive, lack the complexity of a human portrait, but in this exaggeration he builds earnestly.Love heals, he tells us. It's a shockingly humane conclusion to arrive at for the director of Tetsuo, but I welcome the emotional clarity. It's poignant for me then that he gives us this with a shot of the Nightmare Detective hugging in a dream the mother that scarred him so much as a child. The mother is dead now and the absolution exists only in the dreamer's mind, but it's enough that forgiveness exists there.Another moment brilliantly exemplifies this. When the Nightmare Detective mercifully strangles a young girl to set her free from her traumatized life, we see his reflection in a mirror and in place of a head we see a yawning void. Ultimately he stops, this is not his choice to make and if we can't do anything for others, it's enough to be close.Dreams within dreams, dreams where the dreamer is sinking into a bottomless sea, unable to wake up, these work as metaphors of souls in disconnect, in solitary struggle with inner demons, yearning to wake up to a life of peace.

dbborroughs This is one of the somewhat rare exceptions where the sequel is better than the original. Yes, it will help if you've seen the first film, but at the same time I think you might be able to get away with just seeing this film.The plot this time out has our hero wanting to be just left alone. He's having nightmares of his own, mostly to do with his long deceased mother who killed herself when he was a child. It's not until he discovers that the young girl who has been bothering him to help her is being hunted by a dream version of a classmate that echoes his own mother that he agrees to help her.More dream than straight forward film, this is a movie that operates in its own world and its own way. There is a great deal that isn't explained, realities merge and nothing is certain. This makes for a film where your footing is never secure. It also makes for a film that is full of truly terrifying and unnerving moments. In all honesty there were times where I wasn't sure what was going on and I was so unnerved that I wasn't sure I wanted to sort it out because something worse might be lurking around the corner.As a whole I'm not sure the film works, but at the same time after watching this alone in the dark I ended up on line for a n hour or two trying to break its spell. I thought I had until the film invaded my dreams.Definitely worth a look.

ebossert Shinya Tsukamoto doesn't make very many films as a director. In 20+ years his portfolio totals only 15, but his only true slump came between 1989 and 1995. After his breakthrough film "Tetsuo: The Iron Man" (1989) he contributed two mediocre projects before rebounding with the excellent "Tokyo Fist" (1995). Subsequently, he's been very consistent in terms of quality, with no duds to speak of. However, "Vital" (2004) was his last truly great film. That is, before crafting "Nightmare Detective 2" (2008), which is basically about a dream traveler who tries to overcome his own nightmares while also helping a schoolgirl overcome hers.What makes this film so good is Tsukamoto's admirable patience that completely eliminates jump scares as he opts instead to build tension thru long-lasting suspense sequences. I frequently compare this to the little known Japanese horror flick "Creepy Hide and Seek" (2009) because of its deliberate pacing and slow-burning tension. One of the most memorable scenes involves the lead actress who attempts to elude a psychotic schoolgirl who threatens to stab her with a sharp pen. Just imagine what this scene would look like . . . now scrap your preconceptions and watch how Tsukamoto does it! The entire sequence occurs with little to no dialogue and takes place within a claustrophobic apartment complex where the antagonist nightmarishly stalks the protagonist around corners and elevators. It's really a great series of events that should impress many viewers.Another notable aspect of this film is the acting. Tsukamoto has extracted the best out of acclaimed actors like Tadanobu Asano and has also improved the performances of otherwise average actors like Tomorowo Taguchi, but dealing with the frequently inept Ryuhei Matsuda must have been one of his most difficult challenges. The first "Nightmare Detective" (2006) had decent performances despite Matsuda's typical overacting (in case you hadn't noticed, I'm no fan of his), but in "Nightmare Detective 2" something very improbable happened. All of a sudden, as if by magic, Matsuda became a good actor! I've seen a number of his films, and I kid you not, this is one of the few performances that I would categorize as "admirable" and/or "very good." The lead actress, Yui Miura, is also good here.One big hurdle for viewers to overcome is the fact that this film is jam-packed with ambiguity from start to finish; while this may leave some viewers frustrated, it greatly accentuates the serrated structure of actual dreams and creates a hypnotic mood to boot. It's not as confusing as "Spider Forest" (2004) or "Marebito" (2004), but those who enjoy surrealism and ambiguity will likely take great pleasure in watching "Nightmare Detective 2." Those who need details explained will consequently have problems with this film.Overall this was a very fine effort on the part of everyone involved. I would also recommend "Creepy Hide and Seek" (2009), "Carved 2" (2008), and "Tamami: The Baby's Curse" (2008) for recent Japanese horror goodness.