Foreboding
(2018): Written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hiroshi Takahashi,
directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Starring: Kaho, Shota Sometani, Masahiro
Higashide, Ren Osugi, Eriko Nakamura. Running Time: 140 minutes. Based on a play written by Tomohiro
Maekawa.
Rating:
3/4
Fitting
for the film given its title and who’s directing, Foreboding is an excellent case study in how to build and keep
tension at fever-pitch for over two hours.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest work is a powerfully atmospheric examination
at the horrors that lurk, not in the places where we can see the danger, but in
the dark spots where we simply forget that it’s there.
Horror
classicists will very quickly pick up on the movie’s parallels to Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Etsuko,
a day worker at a textile factory, notices odd changes in her boss and some
coworkers that she’s hard-pressed to explain.
When one of her friends suddenly snaps at her father, with whom she’s
lived her whole life, she discovers that, somehow, someway, it’s because she no
longer has any grasp of what “family” is.
She tries to talk with her husband, Tatsuo, about this, but he’s been
more taciturn and withdrawn than usual of late, and there’s something decidedly…..off….about
his new boss at the hospital, and she immediately suspects this strange, tall
man has something to do with what’s happening.
From
this starting premise, we are drawn further and further into the horrors of
what can happen when the human mind, when our sense of self, starts to decay or
is taken from us. It is, in the end, our
ideas and our shared agreement of what things are or mean that allow human
society to develop and act collectively.
It’s the foundation of everything we claim to “know.” So what happens to each of us, and to society
in general, when these ideas we possess are just gone? That’s where the real terror lies, not in
some outside threat. No slashed throat,
no violation of the body, no pools of blood, just the core of what makes you
YOU evaporating into thin air.
What
could this be an allegory for? Quite a
lot- Alzheimer’s, dementia, memory loss, aging, brain damage- all these things
are known (and feared) for how they can lead to parts of what you once thought
of as irrevocable parts of your person disappearing. I think most people fear this more than death
itself, but are loath to admit it to themselves. It’s not pleasant, and worse, there’s no way
to return from it, and Foreboding
never tries to fool us into thinking there is.
As
always with Kurosawa, light usage and camera angles are central to how Kurosawa
builds each moment in the film and connects them together. It features a killer score that is perfectly
tuned to what each scene requires.
Fluttering curtains are a constant motif appearing in the background of
many a key scene, their movements gentle yet still conveying the sense that
something unseen could be lurking just out of sight.
Its
cast provides a solid base as well, with Kaho and Shota Somenati creating a struggling
but still affectionate partnership as they try to navigate their way, at first
separately but later together, through the coming danger. The highlight, though, is Masahiro Migashide
as Matsuka, the strange doctor in a flowing lab coat who may or may not be the
reason all this is happening. He finds
the right balance of being off-putting and a bit quirky some of the time, and
terrifying the rest of the time, without ever breaking or contradicting
character, not the easiest of feats to achieve.
Despite
the acting and the undeniable technical quality of the film, I ultimately didn’t
find Foreboding to be quite as thoroughly excellent as Kurosawa’s 2016 Journey to the Shore, and I think
this ultimately boils down to how the third act plays out and how (most of) the
narrative questions are answered. As is
the case with all too many stories of this sort, the mystery and build-up end up
being more compelling than the ultimate payoff, although there is one sequence
at the very end that is truly heart-stopping.
No
matter its issues though- this is as solid as end-of-the-world metaphors get,
and for anyone needing a good horror fix, this is well-worth your time.
-Noah Franc
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