The Lost Hum

The latest production by the illustrious duo Takahashi Izumi and Hirosue Hiromasa. Last year, Takahashi was director of The Soup, One Morning, in which Hirosue played the role of a troubled young man who becomes entangled in a sect. The intense short film Sayonara sayonara by Hirosue was also screened. The Lost Hum is Hirosue's first full-length feature and he also takes on the leading role, apparently effortlessly. As well as playing an important supporting role and doing some of the camerawork, Takahashi was responsible for the screenplay and production. The result is occasionally cruel and weird, but always intense and creepy. The basis is a kind of big-city newspaper cuttings horror: a man, Nagamiya, is bound and locked in a room, having been kidnapped by Hasumi, whose sister he killed. Hasumi does not know how to go on. She makes a website with a route description and a question: 'I have caught a man who killed my sister, but don't know what to do with him. Does anyone have a suggestion for me?' The website attracts a strange selection of visitors to the apartment: one even wants to play judge, another comes just for fun, there is a young religious woman and a youth who smells a chance to become a murderer. As the days pass, the relations between the victim and his kidnapper do not develop as we might expect. (SdH)