This moody bump-in-the-night creep-out from writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa works its slow, dreamy mode to excess and winds up feeling overextended. Perhaps better suited to anthology tv. (Was there a Japanese TWILIGHT ZONE?) Centered on a young class of pink & white collar office workers, it begins when a freelancer doesn’t show up with the computer disc he’s been programming. Yet when one of the staff goes to his apartment she finds he’s been there all along, just not answering phone, text or door. Standing in the corners of his barely lit apartment, the disc has been ready for pick-up, but he’s too distracted to care. Something to do with his computer, filled with strange shadowy figures that come & go, and subliminally call to him. Turns out his system hasn’t caught a bug, but a soul . . . a dead soul. Minutes later he jumps to his death. The film extrapolates from this incident, with ectoplasm leakage soon infecting everything until only a single couple are left uninfected to ride it out on a ship at sea and a questionable future. Kurosawa certainly holds tone: dark, dank, barely lit; and there are some wonderful moments traversing an empty city amid the murky lighting scheme and the occasional unsettling special effect of disintegrating souls. But this INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56 manqué, makes ennui too oppressive. When the film ends, you may have melded into your couch.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Three official version (so far) of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, plus scores of rip-offs. Go for the original. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Kurosawa’s youthfully fit & attractive cast generate lots of undirected (and unmentioned) sexual tension. An orgasm or two might have chased the auras away.
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