The Booth (2005/DTS/Tartan)
Picture: C
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Feature: C+
The Horror genre has become a joke in Hollywood, save a
few good films, but other countries are being more ambitious. When anything in the genre is taped in the
U.S., it is usually a disaster, but in Japan, you are more likely to run into
something interesting like Yoshihiro Nakamura’s The Booth (2005) in
which an old radio broadcast studio is haunted by a murderous spirit. Unfortunately, the director’s script could
only squeeze 74 minutes out of the idea, but it could have gone on longer if he
had put his mind to it.
With that said, I enjoyed some of the sly humor and timing
of the actors involved. It is something
every U.S. Horror filmmaker should see considering how stupid humor has ruined
just about all the potential suspense the genre used to have here. In this case, the humor is only inserted in
subtle ways that never get in the way of the increasingly craziness of the situation
where people start turning up dead at the studio. The good acting helps immensely in a taped production, where
anything phony is going to seem much more phony than on film. Though it is not a masterwork, The Booth
is worth a look for what it does accomplish: basics that have been lost on
literally hundreds of higher-profile projects.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image was shot on
video, likely some kind of HD, but plays better visually than most such recent
productions because Akihiro Kawamura’s camerawork is thought out and creates
both tension and space beyond the frame (and alongside the interesting editing
that does not try to show off or be slick for the sake of being slick) that
treats the title broadcast area like the separate character it needs to become
for this to work. Color is not gutted
out and though there are some problems with detail and consistency in the look,
it is always interesting to watch. The
sound fidelity is limited, even with a DTS 5.1 mix, but that is the preferred
way to watch it if you can. Extras include
the trailer for this and another Tartan release, a making of featurette,
Q&A and interviews with the actors and makers.
- Nicholas Sheffo
