"Masters of Horror"
Dream Cruise (2007)

Director:

Norio Tsuruta

Writers:

Kôji Suzuki (short story)
Naoya Takayama (teleplay) ...

TV Series:

"Masters of Horror" (2005)

Original Air Date:

2 February 2007 (Season 2, Episode 13)

Genre:

Horror

Plot:

Absolutely terrified of the sea, an American lawyer reluctantly goes on an ocean cruise to be near the wife of a client, with no idea of the grim situation that awaits them all. |

Plot Keywords:

Head Wound | Dead Child In Dream | Stabbed In The Chest | Tokyo Japan | Husband Wife Relationship

Cast

Daniel Gillies	...	Jack Miller
Yoshino Kimura	...	Yuri Saito
Miho Ninagawa	...	Naomi Saito
Ryo Ishibashi	...	Eiji Saito
Tom Irvine	...	Young Jack (as Thomas Jones)
Ethan Amis	...	Sean Miller
Maki	...	Receptionist 1
Tiffany Martin	...	Receptionist 2
Ian Moore	...	Harrison
Gregory Pekar	...	Jack's Assistant
Katsuhiro Nagano	...	Cab Driver

Runtime:

87 min (uncut version)

Country:

USA | Japan

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Certification:

Australia:MA (2007) | USA:TV-MA

Filming Locations:

Tokyo, Japan

Company:

Industry Entertainment

Treading on familiar ground

J-Horror's career can be summed up by the audience's potential fright at being confronted by the righteously malcontent spirits attempting to breach their world for ours. However, visions of decrepit, deformed stringy-haired Asian women slowly reaching out to take our lives is no longer anything haunting because of their ubiquity in the early 2000's. Therefore, it'll have to take a memorable narrative twist, or unique emotional characterizations to be affected by their work. Neither are found in this exercise because of the director's erratic tendency to play temporal puppetmaster whenever he sees fit. The lack of faith I placed on the director's control of what is dream/what is reality led my mind astray and distracted me from the strengths of the singular setting. You get bits and pieces of the three main characters lives...but nothing sincere enough to create a lasting impression. Also, I found Ryo Ishibashi's acting to be cheap and second-rate though his character's breakdown is less involving and more two-dimensional than the other two leads. The film-making and the eerie green colors reflecting the malevolent spirit is fine...but the storytelling's too shoddy and incomplete to matter. An addition of western/genre plot reveals would have added more pleasure to this experience.