Nursing student Asuka (Atsuko Maeda) is awoken by a strange scratching sound coming from the apartment next door. After discovering her elderly neighbour is dead, she is shocked to learn that a number of strange occurrences and deaths have plagued her apartment complex. Things get worse when the scratching returns, her family begins behaving oddly and she is threatened by an apparition of the old man from next door. With only a cleaning man and a ten-year old boy on her side, Asuka faces a race against time to escape becoming the next victim of the complex...
Working from the idea of "a nation of lonely souls," director Hideo Nakata (Ring, Chaos, Dark Water) utilises the unusual architecture of a decaying Japanese housing complex, where buildings come together with an odd, disconcerting symmetry and no one knows exactly who lives next door.
Given his track record, we all want to see Japanese filmmaker Hideo Nakata pull another Ring out of his hat, and the UK press release for his 2013 The Complex [Kuroyuri danchi], his first true horror film in over a decade would have you believe that this is the very film, calling it "more frightening than Ring, more heart-thumping than Dark Water." Critical opinion tends to suggest that this is an optimistic assessment, with Eye for Film claiming that it's air of prooding menace is "tempered by a script that leads in directions that feel a bit silly at times, and some odd decisions leave it feeling a bit low-budget and clumsy."
You can check out for yourself when it's released on UK DVD on 27th January 2014 by Koch Media at the RRP of £12.99.
The price suggests there will be no extra features, and none are listed on the press release.
We only have the Japanese trailer, but you get the idea.
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