Masayuki Ochiai Movies
Infection director Masayuki Ochiai takes the helm for this remake of the 2004 horror hit from Thailand concerning a photographer and his girlfriend who are involved in a tragic auto accident, and subsequently begin to notice ghostly figures in the backgrounds of their pictures. Joshua Jackson and Rachael Taylor star in this supernatural frightener. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joshua Jackson, Megumi Okina, (more)
The Japanese horror film Infection begins with a hospital patient dying from mistakes made by the staff. The people involved stage a cover-up of the events, but their dishonesty and treachery catches up with them when a different patient dies from a mysterious illness, and those involved in the conspiracy begin showing signs of having whatever unknown ailment felled that unfortunate fellow. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- 2000
Marking the tenth-year anniversary of first broadcasting the popular Twilight Zone-like TV show Yo ni mo Kimyo na Monogatari, Fuji television has released this omnibus film featuring tales of the weird and creepy. The thread uniting the stories is a group of strangers stuck in a dark train station waiting for a storm to pass over. To kill time, a mysterious man in black (played by late-night television comedian Tamori) tells stories, each seemingly designed to freak out a specific member of his audience. The first segment called "One Snowy Night," directed by Masayuki Ochiai, tells of survivors of a plane crash in a remote mountain. The survivors are desperately trying to find shelter for the night before darkness falls and a blizzard hits. Mari (Asami Nakamura), a young woman who suffers from a broken leg, falls over with exhaustion. The other survivors dig her a protective hollow and promise to retrieve her when they find shelter. By the time they find a place, they are utterly exhausted. They forget about Mari -- that is until she comes and jogs their memory. The second section, called "Samurai Cellular" and directed by Masayuki Suzuki, parodies the famed Forty-seven Ronin story. Instead of being an upright moral paragon, Oishi Kuranosuke (Kiichi Nakai), the leader of the legendary 47, is much more interested in getting laid than protecting his master's honor. One day he discovers a cell phone, with a voice on the other end from the future, asking him if he were really as selfless and noble as the history books proclaim. Will the samurai save his place in history or save his neck? The third segment , Mamoru Hoshi's "Chess," concerns a metaphysical chess game a young grand master (Shinji Takeda) has with a mysterious older man (Renji Ishibashi). The final section, Hisao Ogura's "The Marriage Simulator," concerns a young soon-to-be married couple (Izumi Inamori and Takashi Kashiwabara) who experience a virtual reality program that forecasts their nuptials well into the future. Needless to say, it is not as rosy as the couple hoped. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Fresh off the international success of such Japanese supernatural flicks as Ring (1996) and Cure (1998) comes this bizarre mystery thriller. The film opens with a trio of inexplicable suicides: a groom strangles himself at his own wedding, an old man hurls himself out a window, and an athlete runs until her legs break. In each case, the victims dying words were "The green monkey is coming." Burned-out cop Sakurai (Ken Utsui), along with psychologist Saga (Goro Inagaki), set out to investigate the deaths. The search leads them to Yuka (Miho Kanno), an enigmatic TV hypnotist. As the bodies continue to pile up, Sakurai and Saga desperately go about looking for the deadly trigger to these otherworldly murders. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Miho Kanno, Ken Utsui, (more)
- 1997
Masayuki Ochiai makes his screen debut with this bio-horror flick about killer mitochondria threatening to dominate humanity from within, based on Sena Hideaki's best-selling book. The film opens with a traffic accident that renders the scientist Toshiaki Nagashima's (Hiroshi Mikami) wife, Kiyomi (Riona Hazuki), brain dead on the day of their first wedding anniversary. Grief-stricken, he vows to make her live again and steals her liver from her corpse. While examining the disembodied organ, a sticky goo attacks his assistant, Sachiko (Tomoko Nakajima), and suddenly Sachiko turns into Toshiaki's dead wife. Later, the scientist realizes that his dead wife is in fact a dastardly organization of sentient mitochondria bent on making a new species that will wipe out humanity. Will mankind's cytoplastic foe prevail? ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
