The Complex (4½ Stars)

After watching "White Lily" yesterday, I've now turned my attention to a more typical film by Hideo Nakata. "The Complex" is a supernatural horror film made in 2013.

Asuka is a teenage girl beginning her education as a nursing student. The film begins with her family moving into the Kuroyuri building complex near her school. Let's be honest. The place is a dump. I never knew there were such ugly apartment buildings in Japan. When she meets her fellow students they excitedly tell each other where they live. Asuka is reluctant to say where she lives because it's in a poor area, but that's not what shocks the others. They tell her that the building is haunted by a lot of ghosts.

Asuka shrugs this off as superstitious nonsense, but she hears strange noises from the next apartment. She knocks on the door, and the door opens itself. The apartment is in a shambles, with food scattered on the floor. She finds an old man dead in a room. She calls the police, and they say he died about three days ago from a heart attack. The noises don't stop. Her parents tell her she's imagining it. But her parents are also acting strange. When she isn't talking to them they have the same conversation, word for word, every morning. Have they gone mad?

The building's owners send a cleaning company to the next door apartment. It's a company that specialises in cleaning the rooms of dead people. A young cleaner called Sasahara tells Asuka he knows what's happening. Time stops for dead people, so the old man is still haunting the apartment. This is no comfort for Asuka.

While walking past the playground, Asuka meets a five-year-old boy playing by himself. He says that the old man was his grandfather. He says that there are no other children in the bilding for him to play with, so Asuka agrees to play with him.

When Asuka returns home from school her parents are gone. Their rooms have been cleaned out as if they'd never been there.

This is a film with a very complicated plot. My description above is incomplete. A lot more things happen, too many for me to list in a short review, even without giving away spoilers. There are multiple mysteries in the film. I was able to guess some of what was happening, but not all. Normally I would criticise a film for being too complicated, but in this case I accept it. The suspense is emphasised by the slow pacing, which is typical for Hideo Nakata's films. When the terror finally unfolds, it scares the viewer so much that he wants to look away. This is a very good film.

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