Reincarnation (film)

Reincarnation
Directed by	Takashi Shimizu
Produced by	Takashige Ichise
Screenplay by	Takashi Shimizu Masaki Adachi
Starring	Yūka Karina Nose Kippei Shiina Shun Oguri
Music by	Kenji Kawai
Cinematography	Takahide Shibanushi
Edited by	Nobuyuki Takahashi
Production companies	Oz Co. Entertainment Farm
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	October 27, 2005 (2005-10-27) (Tokyo International Film Festival) January 7, 2006 (2006-01-07)
Running time	96 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Box office	$4,274,679[1]

Reincarnation (輪廻, Rinne) is a 2005 Japanese horror film, directed by Takashi Shimizu. It centers on a hopeful actress who won a role in a film that takes her, the cast, and the crew to a hotel where the present soon collides with the past.

It was released as a part of the six-volume J-Horror Theater.

Plot

A number of people see visions of apparently dead people: a businessman finds one behind him in an elevator. A truck driver runs over one on the road only to be shocked when he investigates the body as the opening credits start.

Professor Norihasa Omori (Atsushi Haruta) visits a local hotel and films himself killing eleven of the hotel guests, employees, his own children before committing suicide, all as part of his wish to understand reincarnation. Since then, the footage of the murders disappears. Thirty-five years later, horror movie director Ikuo Matsumura (Kippei Shiina) decides to make a film about the massacre. As the date of the shoot draws near, Nagisa Sugiura (Yūka), the actress who is set to star as Omori's daughter Chisato (Mao Sasaki), is haunted by the ghosts of the victims. She begins hallucinating and is plagued by nightmares of the killings. She discovers an old film camera which will later be revealed to be the same type the professor used.

Yayoi Kinoshita (Karina Nose) wakes up in the middle of a psychology class, in which the professor publicly opposes the ideas of reincarnation and cryptomnesia. She decides to write an essay supporting cryptomnesia and meets Yuka Morita (Marika Matsumoto), an actress who auditioned for Ikuo's movie. Yuka says she remembers things in a "past life" of hers and shows Yayoi a birthmark that would appear to be evidence of strangulation, which reveals that she has the same vision as Nagisa. Yayoi and Yuka check out the college library, but ghosts of the dead appear to drag Yuka up and away. Yayoi's research takes her to the only survivor of the attack: Ayumi Omori (Miki Sanjo), the professor's wife. She explains that while many thought he had lost his mind, he had become obsessed that the body is only a vessel.

During filming Nagisa begins to believe that she is the reincarnation of Chisato Omori as she seems to slip into another hallucination during filming. The director becomes the slain son of the professor. Meanwhile, Nagisa's agent reviews the film from the camera which consists of the film the professor took as he murdered his children and others at the hotel. As this film is played, Nagisa reenacts the events in her apparent hallucination. She discovers Yayoi in the cubby where the little girl was slain. Realizing that she is not the real reincarnation of Chisato, Nagisa witnesses the actors, including Yayoi and the director, and the two men seen before the opening credits, all transform into the people they portray in the places where they died. Yuka is revealed as a maid who was hung. With all the victims walking towards her, Nagisa escapes the hotel and runs down the road and into the town. Simultaneously, her agent sees the film of this escape from the professor. Ultimately, Nagisa finds herself cornered in a store. She grabs a piece of glass to kill herself before the doll can come to her. She looks at her reflection in the glass and sees the face of the professor. At the same time, her agent watches the knife in the hand of the professor in his film reveal Nagisa's reflection before he cuts his own throat. Nagisa starts to reenact the professor's suicide but the doll reaches her and stops her in time to tell her that they will be together forever.

A group of executives watch Nagisa's take. Among them is the professor's wife. Near the end of the take, Nagisa collapses shaking and screaming as crew members come to her aid. Notice by the professor's wife is her two children in the scene some distance away. She smiles with satisfaction. Sometime later, in a mental ward, Nagisa is bound in a full-body wrap and still haunted by the souls of Omori's children. The professor's wife looks at her from the window of her door then passes through the smaller aperture for food her children's favourite toys: a red ball and the doll. Nagisa screams as they are shoved into her solitary confinement cell as the professor's wife smile. Nagisa eventually calms down with a sinister smile on her face as the ghosts of the children close in on her.

Cast

Release

The film was released as part of producer Takashige Ichise's J-Horror Theater series along with Infection, Premonition, and Retribution, among others.^[2]

Reincarnation premiered at the 18th Tokyo International Film Festival on October 27, 2005. It was theatrically released in the United States as one of the eight films in the nationwide film festival After Dark Horrorfest, which ran November 17 through 21, 2006.^[3]

See also

• List of ghost films

References

External links

• Official Website (in Japanese)
• Reincarnation on IMDb
• Reincarnation at AllMovie

Reviews

• variety.com
• Dread Central
• Nippon Cinema
• Reincarnation review at SaruDama.com