A detective (Koji Yakusho) investigates a series of murders by drowning, while at the same time questioning his own possible involvement. Kiyoshi Kurosawa focuses mostly on the concept of abandonment here. This time, however, the consequences that lie behind the motive for the killings reach far beyond the primary characters. The horror sequences themselves are nicely done and incorporate a variety of techniques. The pacing is glacial but there's more than enough here to satisfy.
Reading some of the negative reviews here only confirms that audiences are getting more and more stupid by the day. No doubt this is due to the endless flooding of Hollywood movies (if you really want to call them "movies") that are made for brainless halfwits who have completely abandoned their cerebral skills in favor of special effects and potty humor. That said, one can only shrug their shoulders at the mass of confusion expressed by some of the reviewers here who claim that this film "doesn't make a lick of sense." Allow me to explain.
START OF SPOILERS
The woman in red is behind every killing that occurs. The murders that the detective is investigating were committed by people, but the woman in red influenced them to kill because they experienced the same rejection that she experienced – they are not an integral part of the future of their loved ones. The detective is the only one who is forgiven, but the rest of the world must die, because she was abandoned by all. Therefore, her influence over the human murderers was simply a foreshadowing of the apocalyptic doom that would later befall the entirety of humanity.
END OF SPOILERS
There are more specifics to the story, of course, but the synopsis above is rather simplistic and shouldn't be all that difficult to understand. Then again, if someone feeds their brain with dim-witted tripe like "Friday the 13th" and "Hostel" all the time, it's possible that their movie IQ has degraded to such an extent that even the slightest bit of indirect communication by a filmmaker will go unnoticed. For those of us who don't need (or simply don't want) everything spelled out in BIG RED LETTERS, "Retribution" offers a bit of interest.
The rest of you Hollywood fanboys may as well not even bother with stuff like this. Just go and watch "Freddy vs. Jason" or "Alien vs. Predator" a few hundred more times until your brain turns into a quivering mound of jello.
Reading some of the negative reviews here only confirms that audiences are getting more and more stupid by the day. No doubt this is due to the endless flooding of Hollywood movies (if you really want to call them "movies") that are made for brainless halfwits who have completely abandoned their cerebral skills in favor of special effects and potty humor. That said, one can only shrug their shoulders at the mass of confusion expressed by some of the reviewers here who claim that this film "doesn't make a lick of sense." Allow me to explain.
START OF SPOILERS
The woman in red is behind every killing that occurs. The murders that the detective is investigating were committed by people, but the woman in red influenced them to kill because they experienced the same rejection that she experienced – they are not an integral part of the future of their loved ones. The detective is the only one who is forgiven, but the rest of the world must die, because she was abandoned by all. Therefore, her influence over the human murderers was simply a foreshadowing of the apocalyptic doom that would later befall the entirety of humanity.
END OF SPOILERS
There are more specifics to the story, of course, but the synopsis above is rather simplistic and shouldn't be all that difficult to understand. Then again, if someone feeds their brain with dim-witted tripe like "Friday the 13th" and "Hostel" all the time, it's possible that their movie IQ has degraded to such an extent that even the slightest bit of indirect communication by a filmmaker will go unnoticed. For those of us who don't need (or simply don't want) everything spelled out in BIG RED LETTERS, "Retribution" offers a bit of interest.
The rest of you Hollywood fanboys may as well not even bother with stuff like this. Just go and watch "Freddy vs. Jason" or "Alien vs. Predator" a few hundred more times until your brain turns into a quivering mound of jello.