MINI REVIEW: Immersion (2023)
VR meets one of the Gods of modern J-horror cinema!
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If there is one modern J-horror movie director you’d love to watch, it has to be toss-up between Hideo Nakata and the director of this movie - Takashi Shimizu.
Hot off the tails of some very average horror films, Shimizu is back again with another one of his cinema experiments. This time he looks at urban legend horror with a VR flavour.
And for the first hour of the film I had honestly thought that Shimizu had done it! After misfiring with Howling Village, Suicide Forest Village and the ridiculous Homunculus, I thought this was going to be like Ox-Head Village.
But one thing Shimizu is good at doing, is subverting my expectations. And it happened again in this film when it decided take what should have been a rather simple explanation for the ending, and turn it into something so convoluted.
The strange thing is, he had the ending already stitched up with the VR concept. So why did he make it more complex than it needed to be?
PLOT
A brilliant young programmer starts a new job with a VR tech firm on a small island. Their big project has been to map the entire island and create a VR world where people can escape to. Think the meta-verse but Japanese style.
However, two people involved in the concept are found dead, their deaths are identical. On investigation of their VR recording, a mysterious glitch manifesting as a woman in red is discovered.
The island’s psychic confirms the woman is the ghost of Imajo, a slave woman violently killed by her captors after her illicit affair is discovered, who has now been unleashed from the other world into the real one.
ABOUT THE FILM
Conceptually the movie has so much potential. Playing on the fears of modern tech like VR, the movie has a strong message about the dangers of virtual worlds.
And that’s where the movie should have stopped and then tried to improve upon this theory, rather than continuing down the path of exploring a character called Shigeru, which just ends up adding an unnecessary plot line in an attempt to explain why he has been ostracized from the community.
This in turn then leads to even more confusing moments. The idea is that Imajo is trying to get revenge on the people who have wronged her - so then what exactly did the VR crew do to her to make her want to attack them?
The movie felt like a mash up of three of four different short story ideas tied together with the concept of VR as an over-arching technological evil - something that people don’t fully grasp. So what better way to play into people’s fear than to say it’s a portal to another world where a demented yurei lives!
I like that Shimizu is not afraid to try something different and fail. I just wish he didn’t fail as much as he has been lately, because this one could have been a movie that people talk about for long time.
What are my overall thoughts?
A potentially great idea ruined by trying to squeeze too many concepts and ideas into the one film, meaning that your attention is always being drawn to a new plot line or character before the conclusion of the previous section is over.
Watch it only to see that Shimizu is trying to do something different with J-horror.
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Genre Sci-Fi Horror
Director Takashi Shimizu
Starring Daigo Nishihata, Mizuki Yamamoto, Ami Touna, Rina Ikoma
Original Title きかいじま
Alternative Title 忌怪島
Country of Origin Japan
Release Date 16 June 2023
Immersion Japan Japanese j-horror 2023 movie review