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This showed a lot of potential at the beginning, but they never really follow through with the nightmare detective scenario. What we get is more like a cheap knockoff of "A Nightmare on Elm Street". Not worth your time.
This was not a very good movie, the story went everywhere. Gore and killings were good but the last part of it was wierd in a bad way. I couldn't wait for it to end.
First of all, I've never seen a Shinya Tsukamoto movie before this. I read reviews commenting on how this is his most unoriginal work, and I really can't confirm or deny that. As a standalone piece, however, I can say this is completely unlike any other detective movie I've ever seen—and it does so without cheese. On a technical level, does that make it original? Not necessarily, but it certainly isn't unoriginal either. Either way, it's very entertaining and interesting, and as I just said, lacks the cheese that the majority of supernatural horror films have lately.
The reason it lacks cheese is because Nightmare Detective builds up layers of gritty reality through mainly being a comic (but not comical) detective mystery. This gives a lot more weight to the supernatural elements, and creates a lot cooler tone. I've seen people bash the detective elements of the story, but I personally thought they were genius. The idea of having two detectives, one a police detective and the other a dream detective working together was very cool. Like I said, the idea isn't wholesale original, but it's certainly different and very well done.
Shinya Tsukamoto's camerawork and cinematography left me in awe more than once. The man knows how to direct. The entire movie has the best production value I've ever seen in an Asian movie, and I've seen a lot of Asian movies. The detail is crisp, and sometimes with color washout that completed the gritty, dirty comic book tone. The dream sequences are not all-out surrealism as would be cliché, but have subtle nods at surrealism while being otherwise realistic. Once again, genius.
I've read reviews that trash this movie for not being scary. Simply put: what movie IS scary anymore? I've seen hundreds of horror movies, and I can count the ones that were honestly scary on one hand. I can't compare this to Shinya Tsukamoto's other works, as I said, but from what I take, this is a step down on the level of terror. Fine. Why is that bad? A movie that exists only to be scary is just like a movie that exists just to be gory—it's hallow. The Exorcist is quoted as "the scariest movie of all time", but when I watched it I wasn't scared once. The thing is, the level of terror in a movie is mainly relative. Is Nightmare Detective scary? Some will think so. Did I? To an extent, yes.
As far as the acting goes, I didn't notice it being good or bad. As for the level of boredom, it isn't very fast paced but it will keep your interest until the end, which is something I can't say about many movies. Dialogue is standard, and never too excessive, which is another plus. The music is unoffensive and unnoticeable, except where Shinya Tsukamoto uses some really cool mellow songs to underline the mood, and it works very well.
Overall, it's very much worth a watch, especially if you're a fan of mystery graphic novels, because it carries the same feel and flow. I'd even go as far as to say it's worth a buy. It did what it wanted to accomplish, and even if Shinya Tsukamoto's other works are better than this, I don't see how anyone would be disappointed.
I loved this movie and everthing about it. It was so fucked up and I loved the gritty feel to it. Not to mention that the creature or whatever was really creepy. Towards the end it got really messed up to and a little confusing but a great movie.
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