Chaos: Reviews

ALTERNATE SYNOPSIS:
From director Hideo Nakata (The Ring, The Ring 2), Japan's modern sensei of suspense, comes an ingenious and hypnotic thriller of unrelenting intensity. After a successful Japanese businessman's ravishing trophy wife (The Ring's Miki Nakatani) vanishes, sadistic and taunting ransom demands arrive and the police are summoned. As the true nature of the stakes for the captor (Masato Hagiwara) and his captive unfolds, Chaos fluidly transforms from a precision neo-noir into a macabre and shocking thriller and ultimately into a lurid, intoxicating sexual gothic. Neither pleading eyes nor bound wrists, a bandaged hand nor a shallow grave are what they seem as each step Chaos takes leads to a suspenseful threshold more perilous and unpredictable than the last. In Chaos, Nakata effortlessly and legitimately invokes genre classics like Les Diaboliques and Vertigo while crafting a sleekly diabolical puzzle as audaciously constructed and narratively extravagant as Memento or Run Lola Run. Unsettling, riveting, hallucinatory, suspenseful, and erotic, Chaos is masterful contemporary entertainment that breaks new ground with every twist.

Let's try this: Ringu is to the horror genre as Chaos is to thrillers. Got it? Now, I'm not just saying that because they were both done by the same director (Hideo Nakata). No way. Both of Nakata's films, Ringu and Chaos, have a similar feel about them. But if you're one of those Ringu nuts, don't expect to get your fix here. It's a different movie, hence, the different title. However, there was a charm about Ringu that kept you watching even when scary things weren't happening. I find that same charm in this film.

Chaos opens with a husband and wife having lunch at the "L" restaurant. While the husband is paying up, the wife goes to wait outside, only for the husband to find his wife... not there! Having a corporate job and all, he heads back to work for a meeting, and asks his secretary if his wife has called.

"No, I thought you had lunch with her", replies the secretary. "Yup, I did." And the husband heads off to his meeting, or whatever.

Just then, a huge UFO is seen hovering outside the reception area window, and the secretary says, "Whoa! That's some kinda crazy UFO!" Then the cute woman from Godzilla 2000 bursts in the door and screams, "HEY, there's a UFO outside, where the @!!# is Godzilla?!" Godzilla pops his head over the cubicle just past the water cooler and says, "GRRRRRRR!!!!" and then runs to the window and jumps right through it whilst breathing fire and shooting some kind of laser beam from some orifice. Now, of course, Bambi is pissed for having been stepped on, so the irate deer bounds his way into the office and jumps out the window as well, except that now Bambi can fly and so can Godzilla (of course the UFO always has had flying powers) so they battle outside, but no one knows what's going on, and who is on whose side. Then the cute woman from Godzila 2000 (and "The Happiness of the Katakuris" by Takashi Miike, which I HIGHLY recommend) ... uh, the cute woman says, "Oh no!!! There is a bomb in this building which was meant to destroy the UFO but now it will destroy Godzilla and Bambi as well, which is OK, but also it will destroy the building and all of us in it and all of Tokyo and Japan as well and create a sunami that will destroy half the population of the planet!!!!!!!!" But then suddenly, with an air of hip-ness and coolosity, I enter the office. Man, I've got to do something!! "Cute woman from those movies you were in", says I, "would you care to have coffee or something with me?"

How does the cute woman reply to my query? Who wins the great flying trio super battle? What's all this about kidnapping a wife??? If I told you that, I wouldn't be doing my job as a reviewer. This is a thriller, and where is the thrill in knowing everything that's going to happen? I ask you.

Chaos is a great movie, with more than it's share of plot twists and surprises as well as some subtle erotic tension. Well, maybe not so subtle. It has a decidedly Japanese feel to it. Maybe the director, Hideo Nakata, watched a lot of Japanese films growing up.

If it sounds like I'm making fun of this movie, I'm not. Just a passing mood. So let me just say, if you liked Ringu aka: The Ring, then you're sure to like this one. Just don't expect a girl to crawl out of your TV and you'll be fine. Chaos is a thriller, beautifully filmed, erotic, tense, and as I said earlier, has that Hideo Nakata charm. This is one of the better movies you'll run across in your brief existence here on Earth. Don't miss it.

DO NOT BUY THIS MOVIE IF: You believe a single word about the Bambi / Godzilla / UFO battle, or at least if that's why you want to see it; you don't like well crafted, beautifully shot movies that are really really good; or you also like the woman from Godzilla 2000 and The Happiness of the Katakuris, because then you are my enemy and I can't recommend a good film to my enemy until he/she repents (and stops liking my woman). Oh, I'm not really actually in this movie either.

Note to self: may have to rewrite this review properly at some point.

RECOMMENDATION: I recommend this film to everyone. No kidding. Even my enemies. I have decided to forgive you all.