I want to know what happened to the Hideo Nakata who made the original Ring, tightly wound thriller Chaos and the stellar Dark Water. Whether it be that those films were happy accidents, whether he's lost interest or been somehow blocked from working to his true potential, what I know is that the film maker carrying the name now is just a pale shadow of his former self.
At one point it looked as though 2010 could be a great year for Nakata, with a new English language thriller in Cannes and a high profile Japanese feature ready to release in his homeland. But to say that the reception for Chatroom in Cannes was mixed is to be a bit too kind and the just-released trailer for Japanese effort The Incite Mill looks no better. The film is meant to be a tense, single set, what would you do for massive wealth sort of scenario but it just comes off very cardboard and stagey with star Tatsuya Fujiwara - who is also seeing his career descend into a sort of horrific death spiral - wildly over emoting. It aint pretty but Kevin at Nippon Cinema found it and it's embedded below.
At one point it looked as though 2010 could be a great year for Nakata, with a new English language thriller in Cannes and a high profile Japanese feature ready to release in his homeland. But to say that the reception for Chatroom in Cannes was mixed is to be a bit too kind and the just-released trailer for Japanese effort The Incite Mill looks no better. The film is meant to be a tense, single set, what would you do for massive wealth sort of scenario but it just comes off very cardboard and stagey with star Tatsuya Fujiwara - who is also seeing his career descend into a sort of horrific death spiral - wildly over emoting. It aint pretty but Kevin at Nippon Cinema found it and it's embedded below.