Reincarnation (film)

Reincarnation
Directed by	Takashi Shimizu
Produced by	Kazuya Hamana Takashige Ichise
Written by	Takashi Shimizu Masaki Adachi
Starring	Yuka Karina Keppei Shiina Shun Oguri
Music by	Kenji Kawai
Editing by	Nobuyuki Takahashi
Distributed by	Toho Company Ltd. (Japan)
Release date(s)	October 27, 2005 (Tokyo International Film Festival) January 7, 2006
Running time	96 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Reincarnation (輪廻, Rinne) is a 2005 Japanese horror film directed by Takashi Shimizu and written by Takashi Shimizu and Masaki Adachi. Preceded by Infection and Premonition (予言), Reincarnation is the third film in producer, Takashige Ichise's, as part of J-Horror Theater.

Synopsis

35 years ago, a series of terrible murders took place in a tourist hotel. A college professor had apparently gone mad and, as part of his wish to understand reincarnation, filmed himself killing 11 of the hotel guests, employees and his own children. Then, he finally committed suicide. Since then, the footage of the murders has disappeared.

In the present day, horror movie director, Matsumura, decides to make a film about the massacre. As the date of the shoot draws near, Nagisa Sugiura, the actress who is set to star as the professor's daughter, is haunted by the ghosts of the victims. She begins to hallucinate and is plagued by nightmares of the killings. However, Nagisa is not the only person who has these visions.

Another college girl has a vision that is similar to Nagisa's first visions of arriving just outside the hotel. She wakes up in the middle of a psychology class, in which the professor publicly opposes the ideas of reincarnation and "cryptomnesia" (a sense of nostalgia that does not match actual life experiences). She decides to write an essay supporting cryptomnesia and meets with a girl, Yuka, who was shown in the beginning of the movie, auditioning. Yuka says she remembers things in a "past life" of hers and reveals a mark that would appear to be evidence of strangling on her neck. But that "had been there since [she] was born." The two girls check out the college library, but Yuka disappears, dragged away by mysterious forces.

Meanwhile, Nagisa begins to believe herself to be the reincarnation of the professor's younger daughter, until she goes to the cubby where the little girl was slain and finds someone else there. When she sees the real reincarnation of the young girl and other victims (that are appearing as their reincarnations) are drawn back to the places where they died. (Two of the reincarnations were the girls in the previous paragraph.) Nagisa realizes she is not the reincarnation of a victim. Instead, she was the homicidal professor.

The film ends with Nagisa in a mental hospital, bound in a full-body wrap and haunted by the souls of her past incarnation's children. The killer's wife (who is a sole survivor) brings Nagisa the girl's favorite doll and the boy's favorite ball. She screams as they are shoved through the slot of the door into her solitary confinement cell but as the ghosts of the children close in, she calms down with a sinister smile on her face.

Sequel

The film is part of the J-Horror series which exists from Hiroshi Takahashi's Kyôfu, Hideo Nakata's Kaidan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution, Norio Tsuruta's Premonition and Masayuki Ochiai's Infection.

Release

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.

External links

• Official Website (in Japanese)
• Reincarnation at the Internet Movie Database
• Reincarnation at AllRovi

Reviews

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