Reincarnation (film)

Reincarnation (輪廻) is a 2005 Japanese horror film, directed by Takashi Shimizu. It centers on a hopeful actress who won a role in a film that takes her, the cast, and the crew to a hotel where the present soon collides with the past.

It was released as a part of the six-volume J-Horror Theater.

Plot
In 1970, Professor Norihasa Omori visits a local hotel and films himself killing 11 of the hotel guests, employees, and his children before committing suicide, all as part of his wish to understand reincarnation. The footage of the murders disappears.

35 years later, horror movie director Ikuo Matsumura decided to make a film about the massacre. As the shoot draws near, Nagisa Sugiura, the actress set to star as Omori's daughter Chisato, is haunted by the ghosts of the victims. She begins hallucinating and is plagued by nightmares of the killings. She discovers an old film camera similar to the type used by the professor.

Yayoi Kinoshita, a college student, meets Yuka Morita, an actress who had auditioned for Ikuo's movie. Yuka says she remembers things in a "past life" and shows Yayoi a birthmark that looks like evidence of strangulation. Ghosts later drag Yuka away. Yayoi's research takes her to the only survivor of the attack: Ayumi Omori, the professor's wife. She explains that he had become obsessed with the idea that the body is just a vessel.

During filming, Nagisa starts hallucinating. Nagisa's agent reviews the camera, which consists of the film the professor took as he committed the murders. As this film plays, Nagisa reenacts the events in her hallucination. She witnesses the actors, including Yayoi and the director, and the two men in the movie's start, transform into the people they portray. With the victims walking toward her, she escapes and runs into the town. Simultaneously, her agent watches the film of this escape from the professor's POV. Nagisa finds herself cornered in a store and grabs a piece of glass to kill herself. She looks at her reflection and sees the face of the professor. Her agent watches the professor in his film reveal Nagisa's reflection instead of his own in the glass before he cuts his own throat. Nagisa starts to reenact the professor's suicide but the doll stops her to tell her they will be together forever.

A group of executives watch Nagisa's take. Among them is the professor's wife. Near the end, Nagisa collapses, shaking and screaming as crew members come to her aid. By the professor's wife is her two children and the wife smiles. Sometime later, in a mental ward, Nagisa is bound in a full-body wrap and still haunted by the souls of Omori's children. The professor's wife looks at her through the door window, then passes her children's favorite toys to Nagisa: a red ball and a doll. Nagisa screams but eventually calms down with a sinister smile as the ghosts of the children close in on her.

Release
The film was released as part of producer Takashige Ichise's J-Horror Theater series along with Infection, Premonition, and Retribution, among others.

Reincarnation premiered at the 18th Tokyo International Film Festival in October 2005. Reincarnation was distributed theatrically by Toho on January 7, 2006. The film was released by Lions Gate Films on November 18, 2006 in the United States.

It was theatrically released in the United States as one of the eight films in the nationwide film festival After Dark Horrorfest, which ran November 17 through 21, 2006.