Reincarnation

Aroview: Another freak-out from the dir. of THE GRUDGE that manages to transport the flaccid J-horror template into a more interesting, disconcerting realm of self-reflection and mindscape terrorism.

Flouting a film-within-a-film premise, it concerns the making of a movie based on a real-life mass murder, and the subsequent haunting provoked by the re-enactment of events. Dependably, the dread-inducing atmosphere is spot on, but it’s Shimizu’s bleeding of past and present, and indeed fiction and reality, that sets this cerebrally apart from others. The third in an informal horror series by Japanese filmmakers (preceded by PREMONITION and INFECTION).