The Sylvian Experiments

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11/09/2016 Also known as Kyofu. Not overly scary, but intriguing idea, which I think maybe wasn't executed as well as it could have been. The acting is good, but it feels a little too confusing, and I'm still not sure I totally understood it! See more 02/11/2015 Kind of one of those if only they just dug a little deeper movies. It doesn't really live up to its original name (which translates to terror), but it was interesting and weird See more tom k @RT28982756 10/21/2013 With so much potential, it was a disappointing and meandering mess. See more 05/22/2013 less scares makes a useless movie. See more 03/05/2013 Confused and not scared! See more 07/12/2012 This is a difficult one to get - partly to do with cultural divides and partly to do with the fact that the logic behind the story is not well defined, even in the directors mind. Rather than provide you with alternative endings in a DVD, as some directors have done in the past, the film's full sequence can be seen in a few different ways. In fairness though, the movie appears to deal with a very complicated central issue, namely the way the human brain\psychology works (a biological quantum computer) and what unknown powers it might have. So the director essentially gives himself the same lofty task that Ken Russell gave himself with 'Altered States' in 1981, but he has not collaborated with a writer who can interpret his ideas with clarity. It's quite strange that this film was released in the same year as Inception, because the two seem directly linked - perhaps the writers have been reading the same fictional material over the years e.g. Arthur C Clark's Space Odyssey series I, II & III. The appearance of four young people setting off in a van for a ominous journey that will take them into deeper levels of the mind will seem familiar to Nolan's fans. For Takahashi, without the aid of fictional technology, the divide between different states of conciousness lies in the death experience - as in Flatliners starring Keifer Sutherland and Julia Roberts, or more recently in 'Enter The Void' by Gaspar Noe - another film produced and set in Japan, but one that spent considerably more on its spectacular out-of-body visual effects. Dr Hattori assumes Keifer Sutherland's role as the stubborn and reckless scientist driven by conviction rather than evidence, in this case convictions that appear reminiscent of the Japanese scientists who conducted biological experiments on Chinese prisoners of war during WW2, still a controversial subject in Japan. In some ways the film recalls Altered States (1980), as it examines the power of the mind as opposed to the power of physical materials. The spiritual force of places and things is of course one of the most recurring themes in Japanese and far-eastern film, however this film combines this with a sort of unorthadox look at theoretical physics and neuroscience e.g. where a ghost story might use haunted rooms, this film shows you people that have become rooms, the walls made of skin, the space governed by a hidden brain. Another break with Japanese convention seems to be that the appearance of a ghost or Doppelgänger (a favourite of Alfred Hitchcock's) is not associated with someone who has died years prior, but rather someone still in the process of dying, unlike J-horror classics like 'The Eye' - the projection of human emotions, fears, memories and intent is linked to pain and trauma felt in the present, not from some past life. In fact, the writer makes a point of repeating the idea that, life resides solely with the living and the dead are no longer associated with a specific personality. It certainly could have explored these ideas far better with a larger budget and a better spent budget. Two aspects which stand out as particularly poor are the musical\sound score (around half of it) and the digital graphical effects (some of which we could probably reproduce on our laptops with a basic FX program). The director has made some strange decisions resulting in really inconsistant quality of visuals. The more traditional effects of Ringu were far more effective and indeed some of the more disturbing moments seem to be lifted from that film and the poise of some Japanese anime e.g. Princess Mononoke. There is the common Japanese theme of the malevolence present in technology, particualrly communications technology, but rather than taking the supernatural approach of One Last Call, there seems to be an attempt to address real social issues such as the negative influence on young minds of online 'rings' or extreme forums. So there are probably about three main ways that the film can be seen 1)A punctuated nightmare in the mind of the main protagonist Kaori resulting from a traumatic childhood and her sister's disappearance, 2) A twisted psychological and neurological experiment performed on teenagers manipulated into a vulnerable state by a deceptive online forum, resulting in a traumatic series of semi-real hallucinations for them and anyone closely connected to them, 3) One long dying nightmare in the unconcious mind of Miyuki, expanding on her traumatic relationships, her fading love for her sister, suicidal tendencies and a split personality disorder. The director gives absolutely no indication which one may be correct at any point (or indeed a combination of 2 or 3 of them), meaning you cannot piece together a coherent series of events for any longer that about 5 to 10 minutes - only at the end of the film can you reflect on what the basic story may have been - an approach comparible to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, although that film seems to give the audience the time and imagery to reflect on the probable meaning during the actual viewing process. In some ways you might say that The Sylvian Experiments is probably extremely 'clever', but it certainly does not make for a consistantly satisfying experience. You could argue that a films like Richard Linklater's animated 'Scanner Darkly' and 'Waking Life' are just as confusing if not more so, yet they seem to be far greater appreciated because the style and techniques used prepare the audience for what type of experience to expect, whereas this film seems to build up false expectations by playing down the complexity of the surreal or mysterious elements. I can remember feeling similar emotions while watching the mysterious American sci-fi thriller 'Primer', but it did not add to the frustration by referencing big cultural conventions or cliches simultaneously, as if making some point about the nature of cinema or a distracting political argument. Perhaps with some bold adjustments to the script, different visual effects in places and a clearer committment to the sci-fi and the modern element in the story, this could have been something very special. It basically needed a stronger fabric to hold the smaller themes together. Interesting but frustrating. See more Read all reviews

The Sylvian Experiments

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