Summary
A supernatural horror film with an interesting concept that keeps you in a dreaded time loop with the characters.
This review of the Netflix film Re/Member does not contain spoilers.
Supernatural films are able to play around with ghosts and apparitions, which makes the genre extremely fun to watch. If you believe in the afterlife or the spirit world, this genre will always have something in store for you.
Re/Member is a Japanese horror film that is based on the manga under the same name created by Welzard. It’s always difficult to adapt from the source material and in this case, the creators decided to change a lot from the manga to accommodate the film style.
The film does have a lot to dive into in regard to the story it’s presenting because of how well it translated the story from the source material to the screen. Anything to do with body horror and spirits has the ability to expand the mind and how people look at things.
Re/Member review and plot summary
A high school student and her friends are trapped in a time loop by a ghost and the only way to escape is to find the corpse of the ghost’s previous victim, as per the synopsis on IMDb. When Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto) sees the apparition of a dead student named Haruka, the student asks Asuka to go and find her. According to ancient lore, eight scattered pieces of Haruka’s body are around the school. While they try to find her remains, they also learn more about the Red Person ghost that took Haruka.
The Red Person preys on those who are alone and lures them to their death on the school grounds. This apparition will continuously show up and haunt the students until they exit the school grounds as well. It has been a cycle at the school over and over again, as one death is placed in another person’s hands to find the remains. The Red Person hunts lonely students, dismembers them, and places their body parts around the school.
The 24 hours become a cycle and they all get stuck in a time loop until they end up finding all the body parts.
Is Re/Member good?
The film feels a bit generic in style with Eiichiro Hasumi‘s direction because he tried to adapt the visuals from a manga. It’s always difficult to capture the same essence from the pages of the illustrations and that’s where this film falters.
Visually, it’s just not as engaging and the characters are a bit one-note. The film feels a bit dull because of the lighting and colors used, and it’s hard to become engaged with these characters because of it. Once it got to the middle of the film, the repetition was a bit much (even though that is what the story is about) and it dragged on for a bit.
Sometimes the adaptation is on par with the source material, and those who have read the manga, then they will appreciate what Hasumi attempted to do with this supernatural horror film.
What did you think of Re/Member? Comment below.
You can watch this film with a subscription to Netflix.
