Makoto Wada directs this Twilight Zone-like portmanteau film about the grotesque, the bizarre, and the just plain weird. The first segment features a slightly drunken man (Hiroyuki Sanada) and a very tense woman (Mieko Harada) clutching a suitcase, who are riding an elevator together. When the lift suddenly stops and the lights dim, the guy clearly hopes for impromptu romance to bloom. Instead, the woman freaks out, accusing him of stopping the elevator on purpose. Soon she's brandishing a switchblade, defending whatever is in her luggage to the death. The second segment details how a young woman's (Mami Kumagai) moment of upward career mobility is undone by a mysterious -- maybe otherworldly -- boatman. The third section tells of a novelist (Haruhiko Saito) who fails to buy a train ticket on his way back to his hometown village and is forced to explain himself to a frightfully unsympathetic station manager (Ryuko Hagiwara). The fourth segment relates a story about a rich merchant (Kaoru Kobayashi) who happens upon his former mistress (Hitomi Kuroki) while escaping a thundering rainstorm. The two share a room at a nearby inn and make love. In the middle of the night, the mistress is plagued by horrible visions and soon the merchant is seeing them too. The final section is about a reporter (Ken Ishiguro) and photographer (Kyusaku Shimada) who enlist the help of the wrong pilot in order to make deadline for their tyrant of an editor.
by Jonathan Crow
synopsis
