In any normal week, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s almost self-deprecatingly titled film would be a shoo-in for most unnerving watch. But what he concedes to Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing in sheer unrelenting devilry, Kurosawa almost makes up for in virtuosic technique. After a few relatively benign years with the likes of Tokyo Sonata and Journey to the Shore, he makes a return to the goosepimpled values of classic J-horror. Traumatised former homicide detective Hidetoshi Nishijima looks to wipe the slate clean with a new job as a criminology professor and a new home, but when his wife delivers homemade chocolates to the neighbours, there’s something off about Mr Nishino next door. Amazingly attuned to ambience and liminal emotional textures, Kurosawa conveys them with immense subtlety: the soundless crowds, for instance, present behind floor-to-ceiling windows in the backdrops of his interrogation scenes, churning up subconscious unease. Teruyuki Kagawa, superb as Nishino, pupates from leering nuisance to a malignant force in a gripping study of urban isolation and vulnerability: Michael Haneke with a raging migraine.
