ISOLA - Movie

Isola: Persona 13 loosely references a story in Ugetsu Monogatari. (The actual similarities are limited to general thematic elements and a pun. If you're curious about the 18th century novel this movie isn't going to help you.)

Much like a war movie might, this story attempts to drop us in an unsettling, traumatic physical place (the real life Kobe earthquake) and layer a supernatural/psychological story over the already tense atmosphere. It's a time tested and true tactic but it doesn't exactly work well for Isola. Mainly because the setting isn't all that important to the plot. We get a very interesting first half out of it.

Like many "literary" horror movies (and by that I mean horror as a story, not necessarily because of special effects), you might think this movie slow if you're waiting for a theme-park joyride of horror, but the movie's not all that long and keeps a good pace throughout.

The first half of the film is really inventive: you have a mysterious main character who, for what reason we don't know, wants to volunteer as a social worker after the natural disaster. She believes she can hear people's thoughts. As one might suspect, she hears a lot of ugly stuff and it's often about her. To manage this, she pops anti-psychotics in the bathroom, on the train, etc. ... When she meets with a troubled girl near the relief station she can't help but be interested (her wanting to be helpful and all). To top it off, she finds out that the same girl is under psychiatric care for multiple personality disorder. This of course makes her empathize with the girl ... What the girl's psychiatrist doesn't know, and our do-gooder main character suspects, is that this makes the girl not only violent, but somehow superhuman. At this point I was thinking, "Wow, this is turning out to be a really awesome movie!"

The second half changes tone. We begin to focus on the personality of Isola and the funky pseudo-science behind the movie's supernatural events. We hear very little else about any of the characters who have been introduced so far and nothing else about the psychiatry. If you're interested in the tech/scifi-ghost connection as a plot device there are a bunch of movies that use it better, in my opinion. Trying to add this element made the story too unfocused, and it begins to get difficult for the movie to keep the same vibe while exploring all these different features. We needed more supernatural horror, less science fiction. Without spoiling anything, everything is tied up by the end, but, everything also begins to feel rushed and thin. The ending is lackluster, but sensible.

Overall, a decent movie -- not great, but not bad. Enjoyable as a whole. There were a few actors I recognized and the ones with enough screen time to matter were enjoyable to watch. The film's done well and some scenes are really interesting. (The cover, if you're wondering, has nothing to do with the movie.)