An oddly lyrical, vaguely Hitchcockian thriller with dainty green-tea flavours and Mulholland Drive logic, Chaos isn’t quite the film we were expecting from edgy, head-wrecking horror merchant, Nakata. Indeed, it should come as little surprise to learn that Chaos dates from 1999, before the sinister rising damp of the Ringu cycle and Dark Water saw the director perfect his dark arts. Happily, though lacking in traumatising spectacle and restless malevolent spirits, Chaos hums with the same fiendish disquiet as these better known creep-outs.
Swapping supernaturalism for hard-boiled quadruple-crosses and chronological hopscotching, Chaos begins with a visibly well-heeled businessman (Mitsuishi) dining out with his younger, indecently delectable trophy-wife (Nakatani). While he’s paying the restaurant bill, she disappears right off the pavement, and observant viewers will immediately be struck by the unlikelihood of such a gal deserting the wallet by choice. Sure enough, it transpires that she’s been kidnapped by a menacing, odd-jobbing lug (Hagiwara). Cue nasty calls to the now distraught hubby and threats to squire the missus imminently if the ransom demand isn’t forthcoming.
Then, as befits the genre, things start to get complicated. Following an unheralded temporal lunge backwards, we see the simpering victim actually hiring Hagiwara’s cement-headed handyman to stage the abduction. Before you can say Stockholm Syndrome, the two collaborators are settling into some cosy Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down role-playing, but this S&M groove is quickly interrupted by any number of lightning-bolt twists. In the convoluted paranoia that ensues, not all of the gear-changes work, and one suspects that a rather routine drama lurks beneath the tricksy, mercurial structure. That said, Nakata maintains a queasy atmosphere and Nakatani’s compelling central femme is diabolical enough to have wandered in from Jim Thompson’s darksome pulp fiction or something bearing the Aaron Spelling brand.
If the horribly inevitable Hollywood remake directed by Jonathan Glazier and starring Robert De Niro proves half as menacing, we may even forgive the Bobster for Godsend. Well, we’ll think about it at any rate.