August 18, 2007

Kazuo Umezz's Horror Theater

Next in Luna's series of Japanese horror films is the 6-episode Kazuo Umezz's Horror Theater. Each episode is its own short story, about an hour long, and generally focuses on one particular psychological fear or disorder of some sort. If you like a sort of supernatural bent to an issue like that (e.g. dealing with the loss of a loved one, obsession, fear) then you might like this series. However I didn't like it at all. The stories moved slowly, and the scenes were often longer than they should be, ruining the pace of things. The directing appeared amateurish in many cases, resulting in disjoint scene cuts that did not maintain the correct perspective or cheap ways of achieving something. The special effects were pretty cheaply done; you can tell when something is fake because of the stilted movements and unrealistic appearance. The acting was also very inconsistent, but mostly on the low end. And there was no good mood music. A good score could have helped support the stories and compensate a little for the other flaws, but most of the time there was no music. When there was, it was usually wrong.

Posted by josuah at August 18, 2007 5:38 AM UTC+00:00