Masters of Horror: Dream Cruise
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The world is overflowing with J-horror. You see releases all the time and they all seem to have a creepy woman in it in some way or another. Jason, Freddy, Myers and now scraggily haired women. Frankly, it all seems the same to me. Last season of Masters of Horror, we got Takashi Miike’s twisted ass Imprint. The only Asian director of the bunch, his tale was taboo and squeamish but definitely not your typical J horror fare. This season we get director Norio Tsuruta’s (Ringu 0 and Premonition ) take on horror. What we get is your normal J-horror fare with a revenge seeking ghost woman here and supernatural things take place. It’s all fairly predictable and nothing really fresh comes out of the episode, but with the acting of Daniel Gillies (SpiderMan 2) and some great directing Dream Cruise still comes out as a pretty good episode. Nothing to write home about, (I guess good enough to write on a website though) but it still moved along and had a few effective moments.

Lawyer Jack Miller (Daniel Gillies) is dealing with some guilt after he watched his younger brother drown in front of him. He feels the guilt because he feels he could have helped save his life. Of course, now he is horribly fearful of water. On top of that he is sleeping with one of his clients wives. Damn he’s got it bad. His boss calls him into his office one day and informs Jack that he has got to meet with their client Eiji Saito to discuss an issue. Of course that is the client whose wife he is sleeping with. Eiji informs Jack that they will meet on his boat (fear of water, remember) to have the meeting. Looks life Eiji brought his wife too. Eiji has plans for his whoring wife and Jack, but unfortunately there is a secret that Eiji has and it has other plans for all three of them.

Norio Tsuruta does a good job with a slow build up and strong scenes, but honestly this is all nothing new. You get an isolated boat locale ala Dead Calm and a creepy, soused haired woman that floats on water and walks in twitchy ways ala Grudge. If you enjoy J-horror, and just can’t seem to get enough of it, then this will fall right up your alley. Honestly though, while still a pretty good (not great) ghost story and having some good acting (minus the language barrier causing mispronounced words) it didn’t do much more then just give me some good scenes and a story that I feel I’ve seen before. I was hoping for more twists or something new, but it took a played out concept and did that concept well at least. I will still give Dream Cruise an easy 3 can rent. Not the most mind blowing thing that I’ve seen and it tacked on very predictable ending, but it was still good in the long run. Frankly, if I’ve seen one creepy faced woman that needs a haircut then I’ve seen them all.

Added:  Friday, November 02, 2007
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