I must say that I didn’t love Abductee, but I did like it. In fact, the more I thought about it the more I came to like it. It certainly won’t be for everyone, at least one person I watched it with disliked it, but it treads its own path in an admirable fashion.
Yoichi Nukumizu plays Atsushi Chiba, a man who wakes up one day in a container. He’s been tied up and it looks like he’s not going anywhere. However, his phone is beside him and he soon starts to realise that there are other containers surrounding his own, each one containing a person and each one perhaps creating a link in a puzzle to be solved. Can Atsushi figure out what’s going on and somehow save his own skin, and maybe the people around him?
Yes, when this film starts you might not take long to think of Buried, or the far inferior Brake, but it soon becomes something completely different. Ummmm . . . . . okay, that’s a complete lie. It’s pretty much exactly like those films . . . . up to a point. Trust me, stick with this movie and you’ll get to a third act that will either uplift or infuriate you. I was in the former camp.
Writer Keisuke Makino has created a fun script here that riffs on some very recognisable elements of Japanese culture. I’m not going to mention here any of the thoughts that were going through my mind as I watched the film, but I will say that what I admired most about it by the time the end credits rolled is just how it made me think of more predictable explanations and/or twists before coming up with something that was genuinely, and enjoyably, offbeat. It’s almost like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” tale in the way that so many minor points could point to one of many possible outcomes. Yet the end result is, strangely enough, the right one.
Director Yudai Yamaguchi keeps everything tight and claustrophobic, as it should be, and also manages to make the most of his leading man, Nukumizu. Considering that he’s onscreen on his own for about 96% of the film, Nukumizu does a great job, going through a range of emotions and proving to be good company as viewers stick with him on his wild ride.
It’s another one of those frustrating films to review, I don’t want to say too much and already fear that I’ve said too much, but it’s one that I hope people check out as and when they get the opportunity.
DIRECTOR: YUDAI YAMAGUCHI
WRITER: KEISUKE MAKINO
STARS: YOICHI NUKUMIZU
RUNTIME: 95 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: JAPAN
Film Rating: 
