movie world

Nami (Miyuki Ono) is the anchor for a late-night TV show who invites her viewers - "those who can't sleep" - to send her their home videos. She teases her audience with "they're not very good" until one tape gives her pause: it seems to meander, chronicling the journey to an abandoned Army base. Inside its desolate buildings, the unseen cameraman tortures and brutally murders a woman, recording every cut of the knife - and at the penultimate moment, Nami finds the woman's face replaced by her own.

When her producers declare the tape a fake, Nami launches her own investigation, taking four of her crew and retracing the route taken on the tape to "uncover some real news". As everyone should be able to predict, this is a Very Bad Idea. Someone - possibly, something - is at the base, waiting for Nami... and it considers the murder of the anonymous woman on the tape only a warm-up act.

Evil Dead Trap wears its influences on its sleeve rather proudly. For much of its running time, it feels like Argento in his prime, nasty-edged, gory and hypnotic. In its final twenty minutes, though, it veers into Cronenberg territory and loses much of its suspenseful momentum and unpredictability. This is one of those movies where the less you know about what's going to happen, the better.

Director: Toshihara Ikeda
Cast: Miyuki Ono, Aya Katsurag, Hitomi Kobayashi, Eriko Nakagawa, Masahiko Abe, Yuji Honma, Shinsuke Shimada
Country: Japan
Genre: Horror

DVD5 | NTSC 4:3 | 01:39:44 | 4.28 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English

Extras:
-- Audio Commentary by director Toshiharu Ikeda and SFX manager Shinichi Wakasa (2000; in English)
-- Theatrical Trailer (1:28)

BD25 | 1080p AVC | 01:40:10 | 22.6 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English

Extras:
-- Slide Show