Berlin Film Review: ‘Foreboding’

For anyone whose experiences with the last few films from Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa have proven frustrating (and his recent run of form suggests the heady horror days of “Cure” and “Pulse” are gone), the English title of his latest project may sound rather appropriate.

You’d do well to be wary: “Foreboding” plays like an unwieldy summary of Kurosawa’s gloomy thematic preoccupations and his worst formal tendencies: It’s overlong, lacks focus, has underwater pacing and a dissociative, somnolent acting style that makes it hard to invest in the human characters even before they’ve been partially zombified.Condensed erratically, and not nearly enough, into a 140-minute film from a five-part TV show, “Foreboding” has already had a Japanese release.

It’s based, confusingly, on the play “Before We Vanish,” which was also the title and the source material for Kurosawa’s last film.

While the current movie does boast intermittent sequences that are fun

Read full article