Chaos, from Hideo Nakata best known for Ringu, is a kidnap thriller with many twists that succombs to too many plot twists and turns. Kuroda, played by Masato Hagiwara, is a handyman that’s lured into a fake kidnapping scheme by the beautiful Saori, played by Miki Nakatani, a woman who claims that she wants to test her husband’s love for her. Kuroda goes along with the scheme, tying up Saori in an empty apartment and calling her husband with the ransom demands. All’s going well until he returns to the apartment where he finds her dead, and is contacted by the killer who instructs him to dispose of the body or face the police. Kuroda does as he’s told, but finds himself haunted by visions of Saori who he believes may not be dead after all.
Nakata lets the story tell itself, challenging the viewer to keep pace but unfortunately it slows the movies pace down. Another flaw to the movie is that the characters are not really fleshed out and this led to me never caring about their fates. There’s very little visceral action in the film further stretching the length of the movie.
Chaos is a film that I’d recommend if you liked Nakata’s other works or for anyone who enjoys a mystery. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s far from terrible.