I wasn’t exactly raised on ghost stories.
Oh, like so many of my era, I grew up watching a good deal of thrills, chills, and spills, but the more traditional ghost stories just weren’t really around, unless you wanted them in comic form with mostly comic actors and actresses. Why, it was almost as if ghosts and their usual haunts were forbidden from the youth of my day, leaving such tales the province of more adult audiences than they ever were the young’uns. As I said, you could find plenty of more traditional laughers — the Three Stooges, the Bowery Boys, Abbott and Costello, Tim Conway and Don Knotts, etc., and they’d ape it up on screens big and small for hearty guffaws — and these were the kind of films that were built more on overacting than they were authentic terror of any measure. It really wasn’t until I got into my teens — the great 1980’s — that Horror storytelling truly expanded in such a way that young and old were welcomed to the cineplexes. Mind you: the adults in the room may not have been elated over sharing space with us, but we came anyway … and we came by the thousands.
Furthermore, it wasn’t until the 1990’s — what with the expanse of home video accessibility in the United States — that I ever knew anything about foreign imports in any genre. Occasionally, we’d get some poorly dubbed entries broadcast on syndicated television channels, but for the most part I didn’t get the chance to explore Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or other country’s Horror until the corner Blockbuster Video had them in respectable supply. Consequently, I don’t consider myself an expert on them in any regard. While I might not be completely unaware of their existence, styles, and trends, I — like many of you — still have plenty to learn about them … and this is why I was hip to check out Arrow Films’ recent collection, J-Horror Rising, an assortment of seven flicks that emerged near the end of the last century, sending audiences on a wild ride into a haunted tomorrow.
First up: 2000’s Isola: Multiple Personality Girl.
Derived from the novel by Yûsuke Kishi, Isola was adapted for the screen by Hiroshi Hatajima, Mugita Kinoshita, Atsushi Kuwahara, and Toshiyuki Mizutani. The picture was directed by Mizutani (who it would seem got his professional start in Adult features), and it starred Yoshino Kimura, Yû Kurosawa, Ken Ishiguro, Makiko Watanabe, and Satomi Tezuka in prominent roles. The plot is a bit complex in so much as it involves not only characters coming together from disparate backgrounds but also pushes a bit of fringe science in order to curiously get at Horror; and I’m not entirely convinced a casual audience would’ve hung with this one from start-to-finish. It takes its sweet time getting to the truly interesting stuff, choosing instead to dabble in suggestion a bit too frequently.
Oh, like so many of my era, I grew up watching a good deal of thrills, chills, and spills, but the more traditional ghost stories just weren’t really around, unless you wanted them in comic form with mostly comic actors and actresses. Why, it was almost as if ghosts and their usual haunts were forbidden from the youth of my day, leaving such tales the province of more adult audiences than they ever were the young’uns. As I said, you could find plenty of more traditional laughers — the Three Stooges, the Bowery Boys, Abbott and Costello, Tim Conway and Don Knotts, etc., and they’d ape it up on screens big and small for hearty guffaws — and these were the kind of films that were built more on overacting than they were authentic terror of any measure. It really wasn’t until I got into my teens — the great 1980’s — that Horror storytelling truly expanded in such a way that young and old were welcomed to the cineplexes. Mind you: the adults in the room may not have been elated over sharing space with us, but we came anyway … and we came by the thousands.
Furthermore, it wasn’t until the 1990’s — what with the expanse of home video accessibility in the United States — that I ever knew anything about foreign imports in any genre. Occasionally, we’d get some poorly dubbed entries broadcast on syndicated television channels, but for the most part I didn’t get the chance to explore Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or other country’s Horror until the corner Blockbuster Video had them in respectable supply. Consequently, I don’t consider myself an expert on them in any regard. While I might not be completely unaware of their existence, styles, and trends, I — like many of you — still have plenty to learn about them … and this is why I was hip to check out Arrow Films’ recent collection, J-Horror Rising, an assortment of seven flicks that emerged near the end of the last century, sending audiences on a wild ride into a haunted tomorrow.
First up: 2000’s Isola: Multiple Personality Girl.
Derived from the novel by Yûsuke Kishi, Isola was adapted for the screen by Hiroshi Hatajima, Mugita Kinoshita, Atsushi Kuwahara, and Toshiyuki Mizutani. The picture was directed by Mizutani (who it would seem got his professional start in Adult features), and it starred Yoshino Kimura, Yû Kurosawa, Ken Ishiguro, Makiko Watanabe, and Satomi Tezuka in prominent roles. The plot is a bit complex in so much as it involves not only characters coming together from disparate backgrounds but also pushes a bit of fringe science in order to curiously get at Horror; and I’m not entirely convinced a casual audience would’ve hung with this one from start-to-finish. It takes its sweet time getting to the truly interesting stuff, choosing instead to dabble in suggestion a bit too frequently.
(NOTE: The following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely for the discussion of plot and/or characters. If you’re the type of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then I’d encourage you to skip down to the last few paragraphs for the final assessment. If, however, you’re accepting of a few modest hints at ‘things to come,’ then read on …)
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“When a woman, able to read the thoughts of others, comes to help survivors of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, she encounters a girl with Multiple Personality Disorder whose dangerous 13th personality, Isola, must be stopped.”
There are those who believe that tapping real-world emotional or psychological problems for use in Horrors is a turn-off if not downright inappropriate. While some consider it a bit of a narrative cop-out, there are some who suggest to do so requires a measure of disrespect to authentic sufferers who might be among the moviegoers. Myself, I’m not opposed to it, but I’ve heard it discussed in life and online; so the only reason I bring it up in this space is to warn viewers that – ahem – a character’s struggle with the multiple personality disorder figures prominently into just about every conceivable angle running through Isola. (FYI: it’s even in the full title!) If that offends you, then I’d encourage you to go elsewhere. If you’re accommodating, then let’s dissect this, shall we?
Chihiro Moritani (played by Kurosawa) suffers from a very heady bout of dissociative personality disorder – sometimes more commonly referred to as ‘split personality’ – stemming from the tragic loss of her parents (in a fiery automobile crash) when she was young as well as from some alleged pervasive sexual abuse perpetrated by her adoptive uncle. Instead of having the mindset of one young woman (of high school age), she’s instead adopted these thirteen different characters, all drawn from a book of stories her father used to read to her when she was a little girl. However, as of late, there’s another persona who has shown up on the stage; and this new identity has a predilection for some pronounced violent tendencies.
In the wake of a national tragedy (a recent earthquake has decimated parts of Japan), Yukari Kamo (Kimura) has gone on a bit of tour of the country, volunteering to aid victims whenever and wherever she stops. Slowly, we come to understand that the young woman can also hear the thoughts of those around her – she admits to being a bit of a psychic – and this condition has caused her to seek out a pharmacological solution in order to just get by. However, when she meets Chihiro, she realizes that there’s more amiss than a conventional mental malady, so she befriends the girl’s therapist – Dr. Hiroko Nomura (Satomi Tezuka) – in hopes that perhaps together they can heal her of the affliction.
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“When a woman, able to read the thoughts of others, comes to help survivors of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, she encounters a girl with Multiple Personality Disorder whose dangerous 13th personality, Isola, must be stopped.”
There are those who believe that tapping real-world emotional or psychological problems for use in Horrors is a turn-off if not downright inappropriate. While some consider it a bit of a narrative cop-out, there are some who suggest to do so requires a measure of disrespect to authentic sufferers who might be among the moviegoers. Myself, I’m not opposed to it, but I’ve heard it discussed in life and online; so the only reason I bring it up in this space is to warn viewers that – ahem – a character’s struggle with the multiple personality disorder figures prominently into just about every conceivable angle running through Isola. (FYI: it’s even in the full title!) If that offends you, then I’d encourage you to go elsewhere. If you’re accommodating, then let’s dissect this, shall we?
Chihiro Moritani (played by Kurosawa) suffers from a very heady bout of dissociative personality disorder – sometimes more commonly referred to as ‘split personality’ – stemming from the tragic loss of her parents (in a fiery automobile crash) when she was young as well as from some alleged pervasive sexual abuse perpetrated by her adoptive uncle. Instead of having the mindset of one young woman (of high school age), she’s instead adopted these thirteen different characters, all drawn from a book of stories her father used to read to her when she was a little girl. However, as of late, there’s another persona who has shown up on the stage; and this new identity has a predilection for some pronounced violent tendencies.
In the wake of a national tragedy (a recent earthquake has decimated parts of Japan), Yukari Kamo (Kimura) has gone on a bit of tour of the country, volunteering to aid victims whenever and wherever she stops. Slowly, we come to understand that the young woman can also hear the thoughts of those around her – she admits to being a bit of a psychic – and this condition has caused her to seek out a pharmacological solution in order to just get by. However, when she meets Chihiro, she realizes that there’s more amiss than a conventional mental malady, so she befriends the girl’s therapist – Dr. Hiroko Nomura (Satomi Tezuka) – in hopes that perhaps together they can heal her of the affliction.
Eventually, Yukari comes to understand that Chihiro’s new identity is that of the late Dr. Yayoi Takano (Watanabe), a researcher who was working on out-of-body experiments when the recent earthquake accidentally destroyed her human body, leaving her little more than a spirit in search of a host. Because of Chihiro’s unhinged mental precariousness, Takano realizes that she can ‘inhabit’ the girl and use a form of projected suggestion to convince those who’ve wronged her to commit suicide. As the bodies begin to pile up, Yukari decides it is she who must bring an end to Takano’s murderous campaign even at the risk of exposing her own mental abilities in the process, making her perhaps the next target.
So … sounds a bit convoluted, am I right?
Well, yes. Yes, it is.
There’s a great deal of circumstance involved here that’s premeditated invention on the part of screenwriters in order for all of these peoples, places, and events to overlap. In fact, there’s even a bit more – Dr. Manabe (Ishiguro) is a college professor and researcher who has also intersected with this bunch, and he feels personally responsible for Takano’s demise as they were working together at the time of the tremor – but at some point it really seems like overkill. While I’m not opposed to having a single person gifted with spectral abilities, it does ask audiences for greater suspension of disbelief to add more into the mix. Just about the time you accept that there’s two, screenwriters request even more with the addition of fringe science, and I’m not sure this one was worth all of the effort.
Fox TV’s long-running supernatural procedural The X-Files often explored such interesting stories, but they did so in such a way that didn’t ask quite as much from those in the home audience. FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully often occupied counterpoints – one usually believing in the extraordinary while one maintained that science offered a plausible enough explanation for everything – and their exchanges were really more ‘food for thought’ than anything else. No one was forced to believe anything, and the tales tended to meet somewhere in the middle in vastly more comfortable territory. Sadly, Isola has no authentic grounding – there’s no central character who pushes back against some of these fantastic ideas – and without an opposing view a good deal of what transpires feels more like theatrical magic than it does anything else. Dr. Manabe and Dr. Nomura weren’t strong enough characters to pull us back to reality; as such, this one struggles with some muddled schtick here and there.
Furthermore, The X-Files also went to great pains to create a strong sense of sympathy with its many characters-of-the-week. While some of them were understandably bad apples, the vast majority of them were victims of some shortcoming that typically rose to the level of identification by the FBI, thus bringing our intrepid agents into the whole affair. As a consequence, viewers wanted the anomaly to be solved, righting the universe that had been wronged in the storytelling process, all to the benefit of the victims. That isn’t quite the case, though, as Chihiro – though never quite herself at any time – is never portrayed in any positive light. She’s often depicted as an instigator or one whose behaviors led up to a string of bad decisions. Because I never supported her, nor was I compelled to sympathize with her plight, the conclusion on her behalf is a bit anticlimactic. Though she’s shown (finally) a bit happier in her closing scenes – complete with a puppy, if that isn’t a bit of forced emotionally overload – I still just didn’t care much; and that’s a huge miss.
So … sounds a bit convoluted, am I right?
Well, yes. Yes, it is.
There’s a great deal of circumstance involved here that’s premeditated invention on the part of screenwriters in order for all of these peoples, places, and events to overlap. In fact, there’s even a bit more – Dr. Manabe (Ishiguro) is a college professor and researcher who has also intersected with this bunch, and he feels personally responsible for Takano’s demise as they were working together at the time of the tremor – but at some point it really seems like overkill. While I’m not opposed to having a single person gifted with spectral abilities, it does ask audiences for greater suspension of disbelief to add more into the mix. Just about the time you accept that there’s two, screenwriters request even more with the addition of fringe science, and I’m not sure this one was worth all of the effort.
Fox TV’s long-running supernatural procedural The X-Files often explored such interesting stories, but they did so in such a way that didn’t ask quite as much from those in the home audience. FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully often occupied counterpoints – one usually believing in the extraordinary while one maintained that science offered a plausible enough explanation for everything – and their exchanges were really more ‘food for thought’ than anything else. No one was forced to believe anything, and the tales tended to meet somewhere in the middle in vastly more comfortable territory. Sadly, Isola has no authentic grounding – there’s no central character who pushes back against some of these fantastic ideas – and without an opposing view a good deal of what transpires feels more like theatrical magic than it does anything else. Dr. Manabe and Dr. Nomura weren’t strong enough characters to pull us back to reality; as such, this one struggles with some muddled schtick here and there.
Furthermore, The X-Files also went to great pains to create a strong sense of sympathy with its many characters-of-the-week. While some of them were understandably bad apples, the vast majority of them were victims of some shortcoming that typically rose to the level of identification by the FBI, thus bringing our intrepid agents into the whole affair. As a consequence, viewers wanted the anomaly to be solved, righting the universe that had been wronged in the storytelling process, all to the benefit of the victims. That isn’t quite the case, though, as Chihiro – though never quite herself at any time – is never portrayed in any positive light. She’s often depicted as an instigator or one whose behaviors led up to a string of bad decisions. Because I never supported her, nor was I compelled to sympathize with her plight, the conclusion on her behalf is a bit anticlimactic. Though she’s shown (finally) a bit happier in her closing scenes – complete with a puppy, if that isn’t a bit of forced emotionally overload – I still just didn’t care much; and that’s a huge miss.
To Isola’s benefit, there is a story in here.
Everything that transpires does so with scripted efficiency, perhaps too much so. The problem gets introduced, a mystery develops, an investigation takes place, a few discoveries are made, and good triumphs over evil in the closing scenes. While the second half feels a bit compressed compared to the drawn-out set-up, the narrative functions like a formula even if one might have misgivings over the ingredients. Still, it isn’t as if the kind of sacrifice that’s required here hasn’t been done before – 1973’s The Exorcist immediately comes to mind – and I would’ve encouraged Isola’s many screenwriters (four are mentioned) to reach for something different given the level of complexity sought and created around the personality disorder. As is, it’s exceedingly predictable, and maybe our young sufferer deserved something better, even though she’s not very likable as a character to begin with.
Isola: Multiple Personality Girl (2000) was produced by Isola Production Group. DVD distribution (for this particular release) has been coordinated by the fine folks at Arrow Films. As for the technical specifications? While I’m no trained video expert, I thought the provided sights-and-sounds to be exceptional throughout the film. Lastly, if you’re looking for special features? In order to be succinct, I’m doing the noble copy-and-paste from Arrow’s press release previously published on Blu-ray.com:
Recommended, but …
Without being too harsh on the production, Isola: Multiple Personality Girl felt much longer than it is. Clocking in at ninety minutes, it honestly felt like I was with these characters for a greater duration; and that’s probably because it really too quite a while for the playing field to be fully set for the story that ultimately unspools. Mind you: I liked it once I got there, and all of it still felt a bit dull in wading through the set-up. Mostly, this is owed to the fact that the narrator is far more involved with unlocking the mystery to the spectral entity’s origin; and, yes, there are more than a few mild misdirects in the process. Sadly, the ultimate solution to setting affairs in order has been done before – I predict many will see the ending before the players run through it – so points are lost for the lack of originality in the last reel.
In the interest of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Arrow Films provided me with a complimentary Blu-ray copy of Isola: Multiple Personality Girl (2000) – as part of their J-Horror Rising Limited Edition Blu-ray Collection – by request for the expressed purpose of completing this review. Their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.
-- EZ
Everything that transpires does so with scripted efficiency, perhaps too much so. The problem gets introduced, a mystery develops, an investigation takes place, a few discoveries are made, and good triumphs over evil in the closing scenes. While the second half feels a bit compressed compared to the drawn-out set-up, the narrative functions like a formula even if one might have misgivings over the ingredients. Still, it isn’t as if the kind of sacrifice that’s required here hasn’t been done before – 1973’s The Exorcist immediately comes to mind – and I would’ve encouraged Isola’s many screenwriters (four are mentioned) to reach for something different given the level of complexity sought and created around the personality disorder. As is, it’s exceedingly predictable, and maybe our young sufferer deserved something better, even though she’s not very likable as a character to begin with.
Isola: Multiple Personality Girl (2000) was produced by Isola Production Group. DVD distribution (for this particular release) has been coordinated by the fine folks at Arrow Films. As for the technical specifications? While I’m no trained video expert, I thought the provided sights-and-sounds to be exceptional throughout the film. Lastly, if you’re looking for special features? In order to be succinct, I’m doing the noble copy-and-paste from Arrow’s press release previously published on Blu-ray.com:
- Brand new audio commentary on Isola: Multiple Personality Girl by critics and Japanese cinema experts Jasper Sharp and Amber T.
- The Aftermath, Tom Mes discusses J-Horror at the turn of the millennium
- Archive interview with actors Yoshino Kimura and Yu Kurosawa on Isola: Multiple Personality Girl
- Original trailers and TV spots for both films
- Image galleries
Recommended, but …
Without being too harsh on the production, Isola: Multiple Personality Girl felt much longer than it is. Clocking in at ninety minutes, it honestly felt like I was with these characters for a greater duration; and that’s probably because it really too quite a while for the playing field to be fully set for the story that ultimately unspools. Mind you: I liked it once I got there, and all of it still felt a bit dull in wading through the set-up. Mostly, this is owed to the fact that the narrator is far more involved with unlocking the mystery to the spectral entity’s origin; and, yes, there are more than a few mild misdirects in the process. Sadly, the ultimate solution to setting affairs in order has been done before – I predict many will see the ending before the players run through it – so points are lost for the lack of originality in the last reel.
In the interest of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Arrow Films provided me with a complimentary Blu-ray copy of Isola: Multiple Personality Girl (2000) – as part of their J-Horror Rising Limited Edition Blu-ray Collection – by request for the expressed purpose of completing this review. Their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.
-- EZ
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