Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CREEPY: The Japanese master of quiet fright returns -- with a jolt

If you've seen a film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa -- say, Pulse, Cure, Tokyo Sonata or the beautifully oddball Bright Future -- you'll know how remarkably quiet, riveting, beautifully-if-unshowily composed and surprisingly diverse this filmmaker's work can be. Kurosawa (shown below) is noted mostly for his films that fit somewhere into the thriller/ mystery/other-worldly realm. His latest, the perfectly titled CREEPY, is a terrific addition to that realm.

TrustMovies would call this very creepy movie one of Kurosawa's best, except that I say this about each of the man's films. I've never seen a bad one. He's too subtle and too interested in character and motivation to ever hand us anything so typically "frightening" as those Ringu/TheRing movies. Kurosawa frightens us in an entirely different manner. There is always something beyond our understanding in his films, but he gives this to us in such as way that we buy into it and finally accept that it indeed goes beyond what we can fully comprehend. Somehow he even makes us grateful.

His movies may thrill, frighten, shock and startle us. But they also approach art. Creepy begins with a detective questioning a serial killer and trying to get at the man's motivation and morality. This does not end well.

Soon after, our "hero" (a particularly fine, strong and taciturn performance from one of the best-looking men to grace current cinema, Hidetoshi Nishijima, above, and below, center) is living with his wife and big, shaggy dog in another part of town and attempting to get on with his new life as a teacher, and, along with his wife, to get to know his new neighbors. This does not go well, either, and it leads us, the family, and some of our hero's former co-workers into very dark waters.

To go much further into plot points would spoil things. Suffice it to say that the cast includes the great Teruyuki Kagawa (above, left, and below, from Devils on the Doorstep and Key of Life) as the family's most unusual neighbor, and Yûko Takeuchi , who brings beauty, pathos and finally something very strange and frightening to her role of the detective/teacher's long-suffering (and then simply suffering) wife.

The beyond-our-understanding element here is some kind of strange liquid injected into the various characters that appears to allow them to be controlled utterly. Or maybe only somewhat. The degree is important, and it is central to the theme and mystery here, which deals with responsibility, morality and motivation. By the end of Creepy, you will not only have been creeped-out but left, as are certain family members, to wrestle, perhaps forever, with the results of what they did -- or didn't -- do.
And why.

The movie -- from KimStim Films and running a long but never-for-a-moment dull 130 minutes -- opens this Friday, October 21, in New York City (at the Metrograph), Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Ahrya Fine Arts) and San Francisco (Roxie Theater), with a further rollout across the country coming in November. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.

HEREAFTER opens: finally -- a Clint Eastwood movie I can (nearly) embrace

TrustMovies is delighted by HEREAFTER, the new Clint Eastwood film about near-death experience, life after the big D, and love in the here-and-now. Apparently, though not exactly alone in his delight, TM's opinion goes against those of many critics who generally favor Eastwood's earlier oeuvre and are rather down on this new one. For this reviewer, however, it's the reverse: Million Dollar Baby and Grand Torino (to name but two very popular Eastwood films) struck him as among the most over-rated, not to mention over-the-top, heavy-handers in recent film history, yet Hereafter is often surprisingly delicate -- never more so than when it is dealing with one-on-one moments between its several protagonists.

Eastwood (shown on set at left) is a director who generally favors cliché. It's one thing to do this where themes are concerned: How many are there, really? We're stuck with a very limited repertoire. It's how a director handles the theme that counts, and here Eastwood has often brought out the sledge hammer.  Which makes it all the more remarkable how precisely and with great feeling the scenes between his various protagonists turn out. Granted, he's used some wonderful actors -- Matt Damon (two photos below, left), Cécile De France (below, right), Steve Schirripa (also fine -- yet so different -- in the recent Hungry Ghosts), Richard Kind, Jay Mohr (two photos below, right), Stéphane Freiss -- plus some new actors (whom we should soon see more of) and one, Bryce Dallas Howard, who's better here than I've seen her in any other of her films.

Eastwood has also given his actors the space to react, respond and live -- and then put this together (the editing -- by Joel Cox and Gary Roach -- is superb) so that we're with these people moment-to-moment and about as deeply and realistically as movies make possible. Unlike, say, Changling, in which performances were good but the direction too pushy and the movie (as often happens with Eastwood films) far too lengthy for what it had to show and tell, Hereafter runs two hours (plus credits) and is all of a piece. And -- wow -- how its pieces fit so interestingly together!

During the first few minutes of the movie, we are treated to perhaps the most spectacular set piece to have appeared in any Eastwood film (forget that: any film that I recall) with special effects for a change so special and real that this viewer was blown away. Other than the initial shot of the event, as seen from above, Eastwood keeps his camera low so we're with the participants all the way. This is stunning stuff. But because it happens early in the movie and nothing else remotely comes up to this level of shock and awe, you might think that Eastwood has mis-considered by giving us something this spectacular at the beginning, rather than at the end. Not at all.

Like (almost) everything else in the film, because this scene is of such high quality, we don't miss not getting more of the same. Each ensuing scene proceeds in similar fashion -- providing us with just about the best of its type that we could want. Whether it's a suspense scene (in the subway with the young boy and his brother's cap), a "building the relationship" scene (in the cooking school, as Howard and Damon, blindfolded, taste various foods), or a scene about love, loss and career (de France and her boss/lover, played quite well by Thierry Neuvic -- below, right -- talk over the "next step"), Eastwood and his cast nail it every time.

A word of praise must be doled out to screenwriter Peter Morgan, who, up to now, has given us some fine films about state, sports, politics, and people (The Queen, The Damned United, Frost/Nixon, Longford). Suddenly, here he is dealing with something otherworldly. And doing it about as well as anyone has done. The afterlife is not a subject of which I am overly fond. I don't believe in it (but then how would I -- or any of us -- know?), I don't care about it (we ought to make the best of our time now, not when we're gone) and I find the amount of time that our art and culture spend on this subject rather frightful and disappointing.

And yet I loved this movie. Because, though it is just a movie, it takes us quite pleasurably away from the everyday and into the realm of fancy and fantasy -- while keeping us grounded by making every fanciful event, feeling and moment utterly humane. So well do we care about and understand the characters on view that we'll follow them anywhere, even into the otherworldly. This is the mark of very worthwhile mainstream filmmaking.

Now, about that caveat I mentioned in an earlier post (and above, by using the word "almost"): my biggest, my only gripe, really, is why Mr Eastwood, since he has handled so much else so beautifully, could not have found some way to bring us the death/near-death experience and/or the medium's (Mr. Damon) experience of communicating with the dead without resorting to the same old clichés of white light and sudden, short appearances of fractured images of the departed. We've seen these countless time already; surely film vocabulary is large enough to encompass a new way to show us near-death and communication with the dead? And if not, then how about just using sound effects? Those that Eastwood and his sound crew have managed in this film are actually quite good, so why not drop the visuals and just go with sound? Or better yet, because the acting is of such a high order, why not let the actors make the connection between the medium and his subject solely on their skillful interpretation of these moments? That would be something to see!

Perhaps the filmmaker and his studio (the ever-obvious Warner Bros) decided that mainstream audiences would not be able to accept such subtlety. But you never know until you try. Meanwhile, we have so much else to savor here: Mr. Schirripa's delightful cooking classes; Ms de France's artful ability to turn a high-level, power playing TV reporter into an vulnerable, confused young woman (compare this performance to the one's she currently giving in Mesrine: Killer Instinct); Mr. Damon's wonderful ability to underplay for maximum emotion; Ms Howard (below, left), with her cheery exterior, so sweet and slightly over-the-top, collapsing into sobs on the staircase; and the splendid set of twins Frankie and George McLaren (shown above, but don't ask me which is which), who bring such gravity and kindness to the movie.

I could go on because, despite my caveats, there's so much to love about Hereafter that I look forward to seeing it again soon. Meanwhile, you can view it starting tomorrow, October 15, here in NYC at AMC Lowe's Lincoln Square or Regal Union Square 14, as well as elsewhere around the country.