Haze

2005 [JAPANESE]

Action / Horror / Mystery

19
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 78% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 78% · 500 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.4/10 10 3370 3.4K

half-length film claustrophobia maze imprisonment surrealism survival

Plot summary

A man awakes to find himself trapped in a dirty, confined crawlspace. He barely has enough room to move. He also has no memory of why he's there, or why he's bleeding from a stomach wound. Apparently drugged, he occasionally 'zones out' of his surroundings as he tries to edge towards his way to freedom. But the more he explores, the more pain he has to endure, and the more frightening his predicament becomes.

720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
442.53 MB
1280*710
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
12 hr 48 min
Seeds 1
821.01 MB
1904*1056
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
12 hr 48 min
Seeds 9

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Indyrod 8 / 10

Disturbing ambiguous nightmare, or maybe not...

Coming close to completing my collection of all the Shinya Tsukamoto movies, and this one is pretty hard to explain. A man wakes up in somekind of a concrete space, hardly able to move, and notices he has an injury which is bleeding. It's very dark, and you only see his face for quite a while and hear him think to himself about what is going on. He begins to crawl through tunnels, or maybe a maze, and comes across a woman also trapped and bleeding. Different visions occurs, like a force knocking on a huge door which he can't seem to reach, and multilated bodies floating on the surface of a source of water in this space. They begin a conversation about life, dreams, death, and what is happening to each other, and how to escape. He wonders if the world is at war and they are prisoners, or some pervert has locked them away for whatever reason, or is it really a very nasty nightmare or are they in hell. That's pretty much what is going on, at least for what you can see, because the movie is pretty dark until the last 10 minutes or so. Although the movie is only around 49 minutes long, that is plenty long enough for this type of ambiguous narrative. Being a huge fan of Tsukamoto, this movie to me is like a terrible nightmare, and that may be what it is, you have to judge that because the movie doesn't help you along much at all. But what there is that is so Tsukamoto, is the superior use of music and sound effects, along with some disturbing visuals. Interesting movie to say the least, and a must-have of course for Tsukamoto fans.
Reviewed by andrew73249 7 / 10

Claustrophobic nightmare on film.

A man wakes up in an endless black maze, with only a few inches of head room, forced to crawl around fruitlessly, all with no idea where he is or how he got there. The only respite from this is the torment he receives from various booby traps and his brief glimpses into chambers in which torture, dismemberment, and various unspeakable acts are committed upon other hapless victims by unseen agents. Yes folks, the word "grim" doesn't really even begin to describe this one.Tsukamoto brings us a punishing, claustrophobic nightmare on film that defies explanation, including the obvious one that the characters are dead and in hell. While the "person wakes up in room with no idea who he is or how he got there" device is well worn, it remains so effective simply because it can be a metaphor for almost anything. Rarely is it used as well as it is here, despite the absence of easy interpretations.I've never been great at speculating about the "true" meaning of a film like this, but I will say that it seems to involve the aftermath of an altercation of some kind in which the man and a woman in his life both receive stab wounds to the abdomen. We don't learn much more than that, but the last 5 to 10 minutes completely open the possibilities, and surprisingly, provide something resembling an upbeat conclusion. Well, sort of. Intriguingly, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" is not quite the sign posted here.Speaking of the afterlife, if that's what this is, this particular vision of damnation is astonishingly similar to the one that has haunted me as long as I can remember. Being forced to crawl around in a dark, extremely tight space for all eternity is apparently the very personal conception of hell that I in fact share with many others, or at least with Tsukamoto. If you're one of us, then consider this a warning or, if you like, an invitation to watch. Suffice it to say, this is not for all tastes or moods. But if you want something that makes Cube seem like a cheerful, feel-good film, this might just be the one for you.
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