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5

Formalism comes naturally to Kurosawa, like walking or breathing; his frames, never ostentatious, somehow go from spare to pressurized without visible manipulation. Chime, which runs 45 minutes long, is , like so many of KK's films, a diabolical paradox, an exercise in control describing a plague of dissociative behaviour; it could be a sequel to Cure except that there's no psychic terrorist at the center, only a kind of free-floating, ambient madness that seems to freely between people and spaces, and maybe thrugh the screen as well. I'm certainly not feeling very well at the moment...

4

Uncanny and existentially terrifying in a way that I haven't felt since the first time I saw Cure and Pulse. Not the first to mention this on this website but this is Kiyoshi with the B subplots stripped out until it's almost pure form, practically abstract. More than an exercise in my opinion, everyday modern alienation pared down to abstract terror - almost like a horror Antonioni. Disassociation is always around the corner - I haven't been this unsettled by a movie in years.

And as always with the later Kiyoshi pictures it's also a little masterclass in directing, but even more stripped down and essential here: not a shot is wasted, and it seems like not a second is wasted as well.

7

Invisible sounds of the modern world: putting out the trash, balancing work and family, between art and profit, all while dealing with a progressive existential alienation that slowly contaminates everything, even the actual matter of the world. A hitchcockian yarn plagued by Kurosawa's eerie, ghostly formal games, both visual and especially sonorous. Nobody conveys contemporary social malaise quite so effectively, nor so precisely. That murder sequence under the difracting lights and sounds of the train was great.

4

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

2

One of the purest Kurosawa movies. Very direct and stripped about how his formal control can highlight unease and the malaise behind the spookiness. Very much for the fans, but why else make something like this.

Review by nick ★★★★ Liked

In this 45-minute unsettling experiment, Kiyoshi Kurosawa provides an interesting new piece to his brand of unknown horror. It's highly reminiscent of Cure and Pulse, but a sense of autonomy separates this textually and visually.

Evil grows out of life's safe banality in a classic Kurosawa setting, and no explanation is given. Instead of telling a coherent story, Kurosawa is content with letting visuals and sound do the talking. Between long takes and unrelenting scores, Chime is a terrific style exercise that may have benefitted from a clearer narrative, but it's already scarier than most of its counterparts. Highly recommended.

4

The death rattle of the modern world, a corrosive asmr of samsara; a continuation of the final shot of Cure; a truly cursed text.

5

Basicamente o Meshes of the Afternoon do Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Até remete a filmes como o Retribution e outros trabalhos que possuem essa ideia do espaço urbano como um não-espaço (ou um "espaço qualquer" na definição do Pascal Augé), mas é um filme mais explícito tanto na relação com o terror como na sua abordagem experimental.

É até um pouco como se o Kiyoshi se livrasse de qualquer demanda por um apelo fácil e fizesse um filme mais conceitual, direto e sintético sobre os seus interesses. Aqui, essa questão da alienação e isolamento no espaço urbano, bastante comum no seu cinema, está relacionada a uma ideia de violência irracional de maneira menos justificada e mais franca.

E talvez mais do que…

3

feelin' fine

12

Kiyoshi Kurosawa has long been regarded as a filmmaker capable of getting beneath your skin like no other filmmaker working. This (along with the likes of Cure, Pulse, and Retribution, etc) is another masterclass in capturing mounting paranoia and fear. Within just a 45-minute timeframe, this is both pure and existential, as well as profoundly creepy. Brilliant!

Review by shookone ★★★

even when Kurosawa experiments with genre formulas, leading them ad absurdum, it's still scarier than 80% of the rest from horrorhausen.

11

Kiyoshi Kurosawa constrói como poucos, através de sua forma hiper controlada, um horror de sensações que trabalha no limiar entre a realidade e o metafísico. É tudo muito correto, mas ao mesmo tempo estranho. Tudo segue uma ordem formal no plano, mas parece sempre ser desafiado pelo que está fora.