Kiyoshi Kurosawa	...	(Director)
Yutaka Maekawa, Chihiro Ikeda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa	...	(Writer)
Hidetoshi Nishijima	...	Takakura
Yûko Takeuchi	...	Yasuko
Toru Baba	...
Ryôko Fujino	...
Masahiro Higashide	...	Nogami
Teruyuki Kagawa	...	Nishino
Haruna Kawaguchi	...	Saki
Misaki Saisho	...
Takashi Sasano	...
Masahiro Toda	...
Yuri Habuka	...	Composer

Comments: What an awful movie. Kurosawa's fetish for abusing obedient women in films is repulsive. Creepy.

If he were a suspense story writer, he'd write stuff like:

She opened the door slowly. Inch by inch.

I haven't been this disgusted by watching a film since his Penance (Shokuzai) [2012] disaster.

Kurosawa is a creepy dude. I'm done with him.

Well, lol, that isn't really a review. I didn't want to spend time listing all the failures of the film. But I'm still seething over it. Why didn't I punt? I dunno. Maybe it was Yûko Takeuchi's beauty.

I'm confident you will find nothing of value in the film. You're not into seeing a drugged up woman locked in a basement get shot in the head, right?

Best letterboxd review:

"An ex-cop focuses all of his energy trying to solve a case involving a gruesome serial killer. Gosh, I hope the killer hasn't chosen the cop's family and friends for his next victims."

Add to that "Gosh, I hope he doesn't just happen to move in NEXT DOOR to the killer".


An Example of Kurosawa's script writing fortitude:

Woman goes to visit neighbor, has occasion to say "Oh, you have a dog."
Guy says "yeah"
Woman says "I have one too and will watch out that it doesn't bother you" (show a gun on the table, much?)
Show woman outside brushing her dog (hmmm, I wonder where this is going?)
Woman is momentarily distracted (didn't see that coming)
Dog runs over to guy's house and bothers him (amazing!)

The whole film is that predictable and stupid. Except for the parts that are incomprehensibly stupid.

Kurosawa must dream at night of a psychologically numb but obedient woman he can abuse.

And yeah, I'm aware that I allow for all kinds of ugliness from film makers with skill and imagination. Kurosawa can frame a shot and launch an ominous music cue better than a lot of folks. The End.

Summary: Takakura is a former detective. He receives a request from his ex-colleague, Nogami, to examine a missing family case that occurred 6 years earlier. Takakura follows Saki's memory. She is the only surviving family member from the case. Meanwhile, Takakura and his wife Yasuko recently moved into a new home. Their neighbor, Nishino, has a sick wife and a young teen daughter. One day, the daughter, Mio, jumps into Takakura's house and tells him that the man is not her father and she doesn't know him at all.