ryuganji: film news from japan

Tsukamoto Shinya is one of the few working Japanese filmmakers you can safely call an auteur without feeling like you’re projecting your own interpretations onto his work. His omnipresent grip on the creative process – acting, directing, writing, editing, designing, and a bunch of other verbs ending in ing - can be felt in every cacophonous frame and perturbing mise en scene, like the celluloid equivalent of primal therapy. His last film “Nightmare Detective” has often been misleadingly described as his most commercial to date (that ‘honor’ should go to the guilty pleasure “Hiruko the Goblin”, which obviously ‘inspired’ the climax of Furusawa Takeshi’s recent “Ghost Train”), but despite occasionally teetering on the brink of silliness, it’s just as impenetrable and disturbing as any of his other creations. I’ve never been able to move beyond appreciating Tsukamoto’s films from an emotional distance (if they make me feel anything, it’s something akin to being worked over with a rusty drainpipe), but for some reason I keep coming masochistically back for more.

Now as Jason Gray has confirmed this morning, next up for Tsukamoto will be the second installment in what he hopes will be a “Nightmare Detective” trilogy. Matsuda Ryuhei returns as dream-infiltrating ‘hero’ Kagenuma Kyoichi, and filming is set to kick off in July.

Tsukamoto talked about turning the concept into a franchise back around the release of the first film, but in an interview with Cinema Café he says he never planned on making a sequel so soon. “I thought it’d probably take a bit longer. At any rate I’d planned on making a second part, but thought it’d be after making two or three other films. Then the chance came along, and these things are all about timing, so I thought why not, and started preparing for it thinking ‘alright, I’ll leap right into this and knock it out’.

“It was scary to me even though I was writing it. I’m a horror director, but regular horror films give me the creeps. That’s why I try not to make that kind of film [laughs]. This time around, even though I thought I’d have a go at making my own kind of horror rather than [the usual kind], the story I came up with was a scary one, so I just went with it.

“Originally, I thought I’d make three films out of it. But then I decided to take all the ideas I’d come up with for the second and third movies and cram them all into the second one. I thought if all goes well, I’ll just come up with something else for number three [laughs]. ‘Nightmare Detective’ had a kind of action suspense feel to it, but ‘Nightmare Detective 2’ is more like a thriller. This time around, it’s a high school girl who seeks Kyoichi’s help. The girl starts having nightmares, not for any particular reason, and becomes consumed by the darkness emerging from within her soul when she experiences ordinary things, like bullying. I want to delve into the fears that we all possess, the indescribable terrors of everyday life. That’s originally what I wanted to do with ‘Nightmare Detective 2’. What I want to deal with in part three is Kyoichi’s trauma involving his mother that’s touched upon in ‘Nightmare Detective’. I thought about concluding that trauma in part three, but with the addition of ‘Nightmare Detective 2’s story I want to lay it on thick, turn it into something spectacular.” (source: Cinema Cafe)