Nightmare Detective (2006)

..because, honestly, what passes for horror in Japan just isn't very scary.

The plot line here is that someone is inducing people to kill themselves in brutal ways, and a police officer named Keiko is trying to get to the bottom of it with the help of a psychic dude.

Three things the Japanese can't seem to do. 1) Anything really scary 2) Anything really sensual (I guess there is supposed to be sexual tension between the psychic dude and Keiko, but darned if I can see it.) 3) anything really coherent in terms of plot.

This movie is a trudge to work through, and not just because of the language. The focus should have been on the psychic character (Japanese seem to have more of a belief in psychics than Americans do.) Instead, it was on this rather shallow detective character.

There are the visual dream sequences, but to be honest, we've seen better stuff in Freddy Krueger movies from 20 years ago.