I came across Retribution or Sakebi, the original Japanese name, while perusing a list of recent Japanese horror online. Upon discovering it I realized I had seen one of director Kurosawa Kiyoshi's previous pictures titled Cure. Retribution is available to watch for free on youtube and so I gave it a go. I had liked some elements of Cure, particularly the antagonist who is a serial killer who kills people by using his mind to command them to commit suicide. I found him creepy and unsettling, and the story held my attention resolutely until the end.
In Retribution the lead actor and detective from Cure returns, once again playing a detective and a character who in his appearance and movements appears almost identical. The detective is played by Yakusho Koji, a relatively popular character actor who appears over here on Japanese television commercials and variety shows from time to time.
In Retribution he is investigating the murder of a young woman, who is killed during the opening scene of the movie. She is wearing a bright red dress which stands out dramatically from the dreary Tokyo port location. An invisible assailant holds her head down in a puddle of seawater, which has appeared we later discover due to liquefaction caused by the routine earthquakes shaking the area. Small tremors occur throughout the film, and we are always unsure of whether they are being caused by tectonic plates or something more sinister. The characters barely seem to react to them. As Detective Yoshioka continues to investigate the murder, the evidence continues to point towards him as the killer. Another murder occurs with much the same MO as the first, and the killer of that crime is caught but the original murder remains unsolved. As Yoshioka gets closer to finding the killer he starts seeing visions of the ghostly woman in the red dress and as she communicates with him he begins to remember forgotten memories of his past which hold deep and disturbing meanings.
Retribution is an interesting but slow film. I did not find the ghost scenes unsettling or scary, and they are quite tame when compared to other examples of the Japanese horror genre. However Kurosawa does have his own style, and his murder scenes are genuinely disturbing in that they seem very realistic. When a character is killed that character goes through pain in very real, not heightened terms. There is no fast editing or cutting to close ups of the victims faces. Kurosawa does not abide by the Hitchcockian idea that murder can be art. His camera moves slowly, he cuts slowly, and the murders appear almost as mundane as their assailants doing the housework.
Kurosawa is effective at building tension through the use of very little sound or dynamic movement. He uses space and props effectively to evoke horror. He is an interesting director and I would certainly be interested in watching more of his work. However I found Retribution a little flat, and it has raised Cure's standing for me as that is the clearly superior film. Retribution seemed twenty minutes too long, and with a bit of shortening it would have made more of an impact.
3/5
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