Séance

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Year Released: 2000
Rating: 1.5

Very loose adaptation of the Mark McShane novel Séance on a Wet Afternoon which includes a little horror with the supernatural storyline - ghosts appear to the main characters (a psychic and her husband) in the form of bloody children or women with digitally blurred faces. Some folks are responsive to Kurosawa's rhythms and basic cinematic approach, but I feel he's trying to intentionally drain every bit of life out of some of his films - including this - so they become a series of long shots, tracking shots and audio/visual effects. No matter what, I believe it is an irrefutable fact that Bryan Forbes' haunting (and spectacularly well-acted) 1964 film surpasses this in almost every way.