The Booth | DVD Review

The Booth is a film that is LITE – comedically, tensely, violently-lite. Neither heavy nor groundbreaking, the film’s strength lies with playful dialogue, and an overall sense of impending doom. The Booth will fit the bill for anyone looking for something fresh from Japanese horror.

Synopsis

Shingo, a charismatic radio host who waxes philosophical about love and relationships on air, has a history of being abusive and detached to the people in his life off air.

When Shingo and his team, during renovations, are temporarily relocated to another studio with a grisly past (studio 6), strange voices begin to disrupt their show. As we skip back and forth between the voice interruptions and Shingo’s own past, it gradually becomes apparent that the ghosts of those he has wronged are using the booth of his radio show as an arena to confine him and exact revenge.

Review

Director Yoshihiro Nakamura (best known as the screenwriter of the original Dark Water) delivers this latest export from Japan, a welcome respite from a seemingly endless string of horror films featuring mute frog-eyed brunette children. Although The Booth is invariably part of a larger ‘ghost’ trend in J-horror, I don’t feel comfortable fitting it in between points m and o. It deserves to be addressed on it’s own merits…

Nakamura effectively uses the film’s radio booth as a metaphor for the inner workings of his protagonist’s mind. When the film begins, Shingo (Ryuta Sato) is blissfully unperturbed and thus able to move freely to and from the booth. Gradually however as he is being forced to confront his past demons his movements become more constricted, leading us to the films climax – a sort of supernatural penance in which the booth ultimately possesses him. This all works (with the exception of one final inexplicable apparition).

Unfortunately, the logic mainframe of this film, that any longshot coincidence that can be thought up should in fact, occur (too many soured relationships conveniently coalescing), gets somewhat repetetive. As a result, the film’s main idea – that you cannot escape your past – is jackhammered into our heads ad nauseam.

Of lesser importance, is whether or not the film is served well by it’s opening salvo – that the ‘suicide’ of a past radio host in ‘studio 6’ was the catalyst for later events, the idea being if it happened once, it can happen again. Since there’s no kind of plausible explanation as to WHY it occured the first time, it could just as easily have occured for the first time during Shingo’s stint. I say this for one reason only – we wouldn’t have been spoon-fed the film’s raison d’être in the first five minutes.

The special features consist of a ‘Making Of…’, Q&A, and an awkward (radio!) interview. The emphasis here is on the lead actor, Ryuta Sato, and to a much lesser extent, the director. Both the ‘Making Of…’ and Q&A portions seem to serve no other purpose than to drive home the point that The Booth is Sato’s first leading role and to give him as much opportunity as possible to show what a modestly great guy he is, that we can expect his star to rise, etc.

As Sato’s performance pretty much IS the movie I’ll let this slide, but it would have been nice to learn something about, well, pretty much anyone else involved in the film.

While the idea of a radio booth (with all the inherent dialogue) serving as psychological prison cum-execution chamber is not without it’s share of perverse fun, the film has it’s problems. Nonetheless, it also has an irresistable charm and playfulness (Thanks to Sato) that make the film worth watching. Just don’t expect the extras to add much to whatever enjoyment you get from the film itself.

Movie rating – 3.5

Disc Rating – 2