★ 6 / 10
Re/Member (2023), adapted from the manga Karadasagashi, combines
Alunauwie
Re/Member (2023), adapted from the manga Karadasagashi, combines horror and drama through a time-loop concept but struggles with inconsistent tone and shallow…
Re/Member (2023), adapted from the manga Karadasagashi, combines horror and drama through a time-loop concept but struggles with inconsistent tone and shallow character development. The film's horror elements lack impact due to rushed pacing, uneven lighting, and underwhelming monster design, which makes suspense hard to feel. Despite its flaws, the movie remains mildly entertaining and offers a few valuable lessons about friendship and courage.
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★ 6 / 10
It's an average movie (6/10)
keeranilchouhan
The initial minutes of the film make it seem like an intense horror/slasher film. The way the story progresses with very gruesome and brutal imagery, one…
The initial minutes of the film make it seem like an intense horror/slasher film. The way the story progresses with very gruesome and brutal imagery, one assumes that this is going to be a treat for people who enjoy strictly horror films. However, that isn't the case at all. When the main characters (which comprise generic and archetypal characters) discover that they are in a time loop, things change drastically. The film shifts tone suddenly and abruptly. It transitions to a more lighthearted puzzle-solving film with alternating intense chase sequences. This is good and bad. It's good because it makes way for the film to be more unique and gives the characters better depth. Bad because it seemed like it would have been a really good serious horror film. The film doesn't take itself too seriously after a point and has numerous montages of them having fun with each other (because they technically have infinite lives until they put the body together) and also getting killed very creatively.
The film becomes more about the characters, with all the characters getting fleshed out and friendship taking center stage as the main theme of the film. I don't want to hold it against the film because it doesn't detract from the experience, but if it had gone full horror, it could have turned out pretty well as well. There are a few twists and turns, though, as the film progresses.
Talking about the monster, "The Red Person," has a mix of practical and CGI effects for its body. The practical effects look better than the CGI in this film, which makes one wonder why they're used so little these days. The performances in the film are substantial, with all the actors doing their parts. There are a lot of tropes in the film that are very prevalent in Japanese media, but nothing that really impedes the quality of the film.
The film begins strongly, dips a little in the middle, but quickly picks up again towards the third act. It is a short, fun, and entertaining film with nothing that will blow you away. It is simply satisfactory and enjoyable.
★ 6 / 10
Stick around for the post-credits stinger.
el7
This movie is kind of like if The Breakfast Club was combined with Happy Death Day and an onryo story. The movie starts with a cold open of little Miko meeting…
This movie is kind of like if The Breakfast Club was combined with Happy Death Day and an onryo story. The movie starts with a cold open of little Miko meeting a grisly end. Don't bother wondering who the axe man is, by the way, the movie never definitively tells you, though the end heavily implies it was a demon responsible for the entire thing all along.
Anyway, fast forward to high school girl Asuka, who leads a lonely life of isolation while she nurses a massive crush on basketball hero Takahiro, who has noticed her in return but is too preoccupied by his estranged friendship with Atsushi to make a move. It turns out much later that Asuka and Takahiro have a plot-based reason for feeling drawn to each other, and Asuka has a plot-based reason for being virtually forgotten, but those revelations occur so late in the runtime that they hardly register as important plot points. The pacing of this movie is kind of odd. We meet several more high school students, each of them with their own reason for feeling isolated from others, even if they happen to be popular by the standards of their peers. These lonely kids are all coerced into joining a body search time loop ritual, in which they have to locate the dismembered body parts of Miko and put them all in a coffin like a macabre puzzle, all the while avoiding the murderous intent of the Red Person, who it turns out is actually Miko's vengeful ghost. Each night at midnight they gather to search the school grounds hoping to locate at least one body part to put in the coffin. Each night, they get bloodily murdered by the onryo. Each morning they wake up to repeat the day again.
The days are spent with the tone of a high school dramedy, getting to know each other, while the nights are spent with the tone of a more straightforward teen scream movie, which is tonally a bit jarring, but ultimately the fact that this movie takes these characters' high school travails as dead serious as their nightly fights for their lives become part of the movie's goofy charm. Eventually they discover the identity of the body they're trying to find, and locate the murder site, which escalates their situation as the onryo morphs into a yokai by combining the girl's ghost with her beloved doll. Up til this point the teens have been treating their nightly deaths as an adventure, but it turns out that if the yokai eats them, then they will not return in the time loop, so their situation becomes more urgent. This is also about the time that Asuka and Takahiro find out their past connection to each other, which doesn't actually become important until that stinger.
The movie succeeds at capturing that ephemeral angst unique to the high school experience, and fulfills the puns made in its title. They repair a dismembered body, rearrange membership in their respective friend groups, and succeed in remembering things they'd forgotten. This is the kind of movie that might satisfy an itch for a movie that's spooky but also kind of heartwarming. It's still got pacing problems that hamper the viewer's ability to follow the twists in the plot, and this is definitely one of those movies where you'll find yourself yelling at the characters to put the lead out. Overall, it's a 'not sorry I saw it, but probably won't rewatch' for me.
57%
TOMATOMETER
· 7 reviews
48%
AUDIENCE
· 100 ratings
5.2/10
5.5K
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Happy Death Day is also cool.