Verdict
Summary
There’s something to all this madness, but it just trekked onwards into a staggering question mark, and for a film that piles on seemingly important clues, disgusting imagery, uncomfortable themes, and some stylish direction, I’d hold off any sort of recommendation unless you’re willing to take a grisly journey to a cul-de-sac where there’s no real consolation of having your questions resolved by the end.
Plot:
A movie theater projectionist finds herself in the middle of a nightmare where she might very well be the one causing the nightmares.
Review:
A lonely, homely movie theater projectionist named Aki (Shoko Nakajima) looks out of her projectionist booth during the showing of a movie, and she sees a ghostly little boy looking up at her from the crowd. It startles her, and it becomes a regular occurrence: She is haunted by this strange, ghastly child, and he follows her home sometimes and looks at her through crowds caught on television. There’s also a brutal serial killer stalking the night in Aki’s city, and the killer targets attractive young women and like unlucky victims caught in Jack the Ripper’s web, the victims are found torn up and eviscerated. It’s possible that Aki is the killer, and in fact it’s highly likely, although she doesn’t quite realize what she’s doing (or does she?). Her mother is a clairvoyant cult leader, and before she dies she bestows on Aki a terrible burden – or a curse – in the fact that Aki will have a power of the supernatural “sight” that will supersede her own mother’s abilities. What does this all mean? Aki’s small circle of acquaintances include a newswoman who is currently covering the current slayings, and her boyfriend – a married man with a strange secret – begins having eyes for Aki, who won’t give him the time of day. Somehow, this man is connected to Aki’s terrible past, which includes a forced abortion, and when Aki’s fate intersects with a certain doom-filled horror headed her way, there will be a mighty amount of questions to answer before the nightmare is over.
Totally unrelated to the superior first Evil Dead Trap movie, which gave me the creeps because I had no idea where it was headed, Hideki is a confounding head-scratcher of a horror mystery with a David Lynchian approach to terror. It raises so many concerns and puzzles, but never bothers to solve any of its conundrums, and leaves its viewers spiraling into an oblivion of gore, shadow, and an almost gleeful amount of bizarre imagery no one struggles to explain. There’s something to all this madness, but it just trekked onwards into a staggering question mark, and for a film that piles on seemingly important clues, disgusting imagery, uncomfortable themes, and some stylish direction, I’d hold off any sort of recommendation unless you’re willing to take a grisly journey to a cul-de-sac where there’s no real consolation of having your questions resolved by the end. From director Izo Hashimoto.
Unearthed Classics has just released a Blu-ray and a DVD edition of Hideki, and while the high definition transfer should please fans of the film, the disc doesn’t come with any bonus features.
