It Comes

A surprisingly complex drama-horror (about newlyweds who are about to have a baby) that interprets haunting demons as traumas from childhood and parenting, and as something we invent so we have something to blame our mistakes on. However, the film also contains a real demon that tears people to pieces and turns them into bloody fountains. In a branching story, whose protagonists gradually die and the side heroes take over the reins, there are often jumps in time and between several plot levels (as well as dream passages, hallucinations and visions from the world of the dead), with an emphasis on the nature of the characters and the psychological reasons for their actions. The culmination is a conclusion with a fantastic exorcism scene attended by a dozen exorcists, a dozen monks and half a dozen dancers. The film’s big obstacles are that it’s too complicated, there are too many characters and motifs, and it has a scattered storytelling style that will not let you properly absorb the displayed content. (10/07/2019)

I found it more of a critique of society than a horror film. Sure, it's got its antagonist, it's got its deaths, it's got its suspense and fear, it's got amazing imagery, it's got great cinematography, but underneath it all it just seems to be beating the drum of social criticism along the lines of actually raising a child vs. look how well we're raising our family/ how great our family is doing. It struck me that the author is basically saying, and literally showing, that all posers and internally corrupt or empty people need to be gotten rid of. Though of course through the characters he is saying that the poser may not mean it, that they can't "find fulfillment". It's simply a film that has several layers and is also divided into three parts. It has so much it wants to say that it doesn't have proper space to do so, despite its relatively long running time. It's a Nakashima that has accumulated a lot of ideas from Confessions that he wanted to vent. But he vented them quite impressively. As I've written before, the cinematography is great and takes an ordinary horror film somewhere further, the final exorcism in particular is very impressive and I like how there's a mix of Shinto and Buddhist rituals along with Korean shamanism. There are just a number of perspectives to explore in this film and it's definitely interesting. It works as a horror movie, as social critique, and as a visually evocative film. But it's clear to me that getting it all together is not for everyone. (05/10/2021)