Creepy

Kiyoshi Kurosawa has ranked among the doyens of J-horror for two decades. But his patented gambit of pitching damaged souls into everyday terror comes under severe stain in this Hitchcockian adaptation of Yutaka Maekawa's bestseller. Moving house in a bid to rebuild his life after bungling a hostage situation, ex-cop Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) strays from his new career as a criminology lecturer to investigate a six-year-old missing persons case. However, in surveilling enigmatic witness Saka (Haruna Kawaguchi), he fails to notice that his timid wife Yasuko (Yuko Takeuchi) is becoming unhealthily obsessed with capricious neighbour Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa) and his timid teenage daughter. Making unsettling use of eerie interiors and a prowling camera, Kurosawa builds the tension with a mischievous mastery that renders the contrived climax all the more disappointing. Kagawa plays an amusingly malevolent adversary, but it's hard to accept either Yasuko falling under his spell with such ease or a former detective like Takakura being too egotistical to recognise his threat. Nevertheless, this still has its share of shuddersome moments.