When I heard that Ayumi Ito was starring in David Shin's psycho-shocker "The Room" I immediately wanted to see it, though most recent J-horror ranges from bad to barely watchable.
This former child actress/model usually plays supporting roles, from the hard-nosed band manager in "Bandage" to the terrified-model-turned- relentless-warrior in "Gantz: Perfect Answer," and brings something special to all of them.
In "The Room," however, she is the main attraction, playing a woman whose boyfriend (Shogen Itokazu)leaves her alone in their new apartment when he goes to New York on business. She spends most of the film in front of a computer monitor, communicating with him on what seems to be Skype -- and slowly going insane with fear.
The scare -- an apparent ghost in the room -- is simple in the extreme, but Ito turns what could have been a basic actor's workshop exercise into a complexly layered portrait of a woman caught between trust and suspicion, love and terror as unnamed forces invade not only her intimate space, but her mind.
She also illustrates why she is difficult to cast as a lead in Japanese commercial films; she is too intense and individual for an industry that prefers the sweet and average (if at times cutely quirky) in its female stars.
The story, which unfolds almost entirely in two rooms, is as bare bones as it gets, but Shin varies his quasi-documentary set-ups just enough to avoid visual tedium, while adding the needed jolts and twists without overly disrupting the naturalistic flow.
But Ito is the best reason for seeing this film, which I hope will lead to bigger things for both her and its maker.
This former child actress/model usually plays supporting roles, from the hard-nosed band manager in "Bandage" to the terrified-model-turned- relentless-warrior in "Gantz: Perfect Answer," and brings something special to all of them.
In "The Room," however, she is the main attraction, playing a woman whose boyfriend (Shogen Itokazu)leaves her alone in their new apartment when he goes to New York on business. She spends most of the film in front of a computer monitor, communicating with him on what seems to be Skype -- and slowly going insane with fear.
The scare -- an apparent ghost in the room -- is simple in the extreme, but Ito turns what could have been a basic actor's workshop exercise into a complexly layered portrait of a woman caught between trust and suspicion, love and terror as unnamed forces invade not only her intimate space, but her mind.
She also illustrates why she is difficult to cast as a lead in Japanese commercial films; she is too intense and individual for an industry that prefers the sweet and average (if at times cutely quirky) in its female stars.
The story, which unfolds almost entirely in two rooms, is as bare bones as it gets, but Shin varies his quasi-documentary set-ups just enough to avoid visual tedium, while adding the needed jolts and twists without overly disrupting the naturalistic flow.
But Ito is the best reason for seeing this film, which I hope will lead to bigger things for both her and its maker.
