User Reviews

Hideki (Satoshi Tsumabuki) and Kana (Haru Kuroki) are happy young newlyweds, ecstatic about the pending birth of their first child. When a visitor shows up at Hideki's workplace, saying she wants to talk to him about Chisa, Hideki is confused - that is the name he and Kana have chosen for the baby, but nobody else knows that. The visitor disappears before Hideki sees her, the colleague who took the message is soon very, very dead, and Hideki begins to have dreams about a creature, about the phrase "blood calls" and about the fate of the baby. So, as anyone would, he turns to an exorcist named Makoto (Nana Komatsu) for aid.... I won't say more than that about the plot because it quickly becomes more and more convoluted as the (longish, 2 1/4 hours) film goes on. Many years ago, I discovered Tetsuya Nakashima's "Kamikaze Girls" (about strange subcultures among Japan's teenage girls, it's a fantastic coming of age flick) at Montreal's Fantasia Festival, and when this year's selections for that great festival included "It Comes," described as Nakashima's first foray into horror, I was hooked; "Kamikaze Girls" is not only one of my favorite Fantasia films, it's one of my favorite films of all time. True to form, "It Comes" takes all the horror tropes one might imagine, and turns it all up to eleven. I can't say that it actually *scared* me because it was just so over-the-top, but my goodness it is a mighty fine, hallucinatory ride!

Somewhere in "It Comes" is a great film waiting to burst forth. The visuals can't be beat; they were right on point. Excellent cinematography and editing. The weak bits? The over-acting. It just became too much after a while. The length of the film was also overwhelming. It took me three days to see it. Exorcism films have been done to death since "The Exorcist", and every single one of them have failed to best the original 1973 version. I've seen quite a few Korean exorcism films and this Japanese version falls into the same trap of over-acting and cliched tropes. Oh well. It did seem like they put a lot of money into it, so there's that.

This film could have really hit home the subject of child neglect/abuse, all in disguise of stories told by adults deluded by self-pity. One-dimensionally vilifying the characters gets in the way of exploring the movie's main message: exploitation of parenthood as a tool for self-gratification.

We also get distracted by

• bad, unscary CG blood
• huge monologues that conveniently try to explain the plot
• unnecessary characters (Tsuda, Kotoko) that scream at each other rather than highlight nuances of their relationships with Hideki/Kana/Chisa

The visuals are nice and the acting is good.

But the story is dragged out. It takes forever for the sister to arrive. About 40 minutes could have been cut to make it more engaging.

Horror movies can be tough - to find out how to mix them, how many parts drama and other elements you can or have to put into the mix. Mystery also works wonders. Keep the audience guessing if you can. Something this movie does succesfully (imho), which is not an easy feat.

Some things may seem different than others and the movie does warrant more than one viewing to see things with the knowledge of where the story and the characters are heading. Really fine tuned and edge of your seat suspension. It has quite a lot of flaws when it comes to the story itself ... but just don't think about them - it'll make the experience better.

Not one single negative review yet so I have the honor to be the first one to write it. It takes a lot for me to write something negative, I'm really not hard to please when it's about movies but here I have difficulties to find something good to write about Kuru (It Comes). I'll just give it three stars for the bloody parts, they were actually not that bad, and also the cinematography which wasn't bad either. But as for the essential, the story, it's just a big mess. It starts intriguing but quickly it goes nowhere. It's just the result of lousy script writing, lazy editing (the movie is way too long with a lot of unnecessary scenes), and the almost normal 'overacting' you get with Asian movies. In the middle of the movie I lost the plot completely, didn't know what the story was about, couldn't follow anymore, and that's just because of the bad script because I was still wide awake and it still had my full attention. I wouldn't say all Asians are bad actors, certainly not, but it's just a fact that there are a lot of 'actors' that just exaggerate every emotion they supposed to have, with the result it looks bad. Overacting is a problem in Asian movies, I really don't get why they still didn't do something about that by now. Anyway, Kuru was a long movie, one hour too long, with a story that I wouldn't get even if I watched it several times, which I won't do by the way (I'm not that masochistic). To me it was a waste of time, still waiting for a Japanese movie that will blow me away, back to Korean movies if i want some good Asian movies.

It's hard to describe this film but I will do my best. Imagine Haruki Murakami doing a Jap version of The Exorcist. It's an ambitious sort of film that not many people will get. For starters, it ain't your typical J-horror film even if the trailer behaves in such a way.

It Comes kinda reminded me of the Suspiria remake. It's an art film disguised as a horror film or the other way round. It's complex and the narrative always shifts focus. You don't get to see "it" whatever it may be. Some descriptions of the film erroneously call it a "monster." You're not really sure what it is. Is it a demon? A ghost? A God?

It doesn't matter because what matters is what "it" does to the characters of this film and what matters even more is who are these characters and what makes them tick.

It probably won't make much sense to those watching it a first time not to mention it's long and the first half plays like a family drama. You get to see a funeral, a wedding party, a baby party. These scenes will test your patience if you signed up for a horror film but if you're into Japanese culture they are quite pleasant.

If you hold on for long enough you will see all Hell breaking loose. The outrageous storyline along with the superior visual artistry and the extreme violence, guarantee you a one of a kind experience. The Buddhist exorcism sequence has to be seen to be believed. The mediocre CGI in some scenes-especially the "blood river" is not enough to diminish the impact.

If you have viewed the previous films by Tetsuya Nakashima you pretty much know what you signed up for, other audiences may be baffled.

I'm certainly not going to show this one to my 12 year old nephew who's idea of a good horror film are the latest installments of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween.

One final thing. When you watch this film, make sure to watch it LOUD. Really LOUD.

To put it succinctly, you need to read a plot summary to understand this movie. The acting was over-the-top silly, the story line was jumbled, and the movie was too long and poorly edited with cheap CGI to keep my interest.

The movie gets a few points for containing a couple scary and disturbing scenes, but they are lost in the overall mix.

Not worth a watch- skip it

[4/10]