The New York Times by Dave Kehr
The film's mechanical workings are still impressive, but between the unsympathetic characters and the coldly precise direction, there is little here for an audience to clutch to its heart.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan · 2000
1h 30m
Director Hideo Nakata
Starring Masato Hagiwara, Miki Nakatani, Ken Mitsuishi, Jun Kunimura
Genre Drama, Mystery, Thriller
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A man gets involved in a kidnapping scheme with the wife of a wealthy businessman. She lets herself be tied up and confined in his house while he sends the ransom demand. When he returns home that night, however, he finds her laying dead on the floor. In a panic he buries her body deep in the woods and tries to return to his ordinary life. One day, he thinks he spots her walking down the street. Is his mind playing tricks on him, or has she somehow returned from the grave?
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The New York Times by Dave Kehr
The film's mechanical workings are still impressive, but between the unsympathetic characters and the coldly precise direction, there is little here for an audience to clutch to its heart.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
It's not giving too much away to note that we've seen a lot of this before, in classic noir and postnoir films, though to name those films would spoil things.
In the end, Chaos is as compelling as it is confounding, and it's compelling in large part because of the confusion it stirs.
With his sure handling of this thriller's switchback plot and hairpin turns, Hideo Nakata confirms his mastery of genre material in the wake of his phenomenally successful "Ring."
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
Naturally, the worm turns again and again in this demi-Hitchcockian death trap, and Nakata knows how to shoot scenes of breath-holding paranoia: from a distance, simply, in real time. (We'll see how the inevitable remake, directed by Jonathan Glazer, measures up.)
The narrative is fractured, David Lynch-style. Everything eventually makes sense -- sort of.
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