Seance / Kourei (ENG SUB)

Not Available

Japanese

English & Traditional Chinese

2 VCDs Box Set

Koji Yakusho, Jun Fubuki & Teuyoshi Kusana

A Flim by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Kurosawa's Kourei is loosely based on the 1964 British novel Seance on a Wet Afternoon wherein a manipulative woman wishing to advance her career as a medium forces her weak-willed husband to abduct a child, the "intuited" rescue of which will lead to the wife's fame and fortune. The version presented in Kourei is in most ways radically different from the original novel, not least of which is Junko's real ability to see the dead, a fact which immediately transforms the tale (under the skillful hand of Kurosawa) from mere suspense to one of potential horror.

The story's main characters are Sato (Koji Yakusho), a mild mannered sound engineer, and his wife Junko, a (truly) gifted medium. When Junko is called upon by local police to help locate a young kidnap victim, all seems well for her future career as a validated medium. When, however, Sato and Junko discover, amazingly enough, that the child locked herself in Sato's sound equipment case (while escaping the real kidnapper) and apparently suffocated in their garage, the possibility that the police will accuse her of orchestrating the entire event complicates matters significantly.