Nightmare Detective

Keiko Kirishima (hitomi) is a young female police officer with a desire for a more hands-on approach in crime fighting. Her first case as a field detective for the National Police Academy is to investigate what seems to be a series of gruesome suicides. A link is soon found between these deaths in the form of cell phone conversations with a man known only as “0,” that appear to be long distance suicide pacts. When it is discovered that the victims have been killing themselves in their sleep and that “0” appears to be manipulating them somehow, Keiko turns to a young man named Kyoichi Kagenuma (Ryuhei Matsuda).

Kagenuma has the unique ability to enter other people’s dreams. He earned the title of the Nightmare Detective after having attempted to assist in cleaning up the hellish sleep states of a few of his acquaintances. It is this ability that causes the NPA to show interest in contracting his help. But having always seen people for what they are and being able to delve into people’s minds has given Kagenuma a negative outlook on humans as well as life in general. How do you catch a killer such as “0” when your only hope may very well be suicidal himself?

Director Shinya Tsukamoto establishes early on that this may not be such an easy story to follow. The audience, from time to time, does not readily know which world they are partaking in, that of the real world or the nightmare realm. However, when an individual’s dreams have such a lasting effect on their (once) living self, the sense of dread is hard to stray away from in either existence.

That dread is very important to the success of Nightmare Detective as a horror film. Taking a traditional less-is-more approach to the killer’s dream-self early on in the film, you may not always know what you’re seeing or why you are seeing it. This feeling of terror and loss of hope permeates throughout the tale.

From a special features standpoint, Nightmare Detective does seem a bit lacking at first, sporting only a single making-of featurette along with the theatrical trailer. However, unlike most DVD’s of this kind that try to pass off an uninformative featurette usually 5-10 minutes long as a worthy special feature, Tsukamoto treats us to an hour long behind the scenes look into the concept and vision behind the movie. We also get to see some cast and crew chuckles, which is always fun to watch especially on darker films such as this one.

All in all, Nightmare Detective takes the audience on a surreal journey through Tsukamoto’s terrifying dream world, a journey as much enjoyable as it is dark and depressing. With a sequel set to hit Japanese theaters in 2008, I can only hope that the story is not contracted by western movie studios to be another soiled remake, which seems to be the recent trend in western horror.