Well, I saw this first as I am a fan of Japanese horror movies. I really like the twists and thought that this is unique. But when I saw the movie "The Shining", I am convinced that they adapted the reincarnation plot from this classic Stephen King movie. Anyway, I'm still a fan of Asian horror movies but not this one.

REINCARNATION is a typical entry in the Japanese horror entry that sets out to explore the possibility of reincarnation and the effect that past lives would have on the living. With GRUDGE director Takashi Shimizu at the helm, viewers have every right to expect a treat, but this is a film that offers more of the same than anything remotely new.While I appreciate some of the directions that the storyline takes, for the most part REINCARNATION plays it safe. The leading actress is subjected to all manner of terrors, both real and imagined, but her acting is poor and the viewer doesn't buy into her plight. The construction of the plot is intriguing, but cold; it's hard to get motivated about what takes place, and there are frustrating moments when the writer plays coy. Come the umpteenth twist at the end, I was feeling a little weary.The scare sequences are highly familiar to anyone with the slightest experience of watching Asian horror, Japanese in particular. There's a decent sequence set in a library, but too much of the ghost kid stuff that anyone who's watched GRUDGE 2 will find overly familiar. Good use is made of a creepy doll, I admit, but it's hardly genre-breaking stuff. REINCARNATION is okay, but it's not a film I'd hurry to watch again.

Aspiring young actress Nagisa Sugiura (winningly played by the lovely Yuki) gets a role in a movie about a terrible mass murder which happened at a remote hotel thirty-five years ago. Intense director Ikuo Matsumura (an excellent performance by Kippei Shiina) takes the cast and crew to the hotel to shoot the picture. Nagisa starts to see ghostly visions of the people who where killed in the massacre (the little girl with the doll is particularly frightening and memorable). Director/co-writer Takashi Shimizu relates the absorbing story at a gradual, yet steady pace, offers a compelling behind-the-scenes glimpse at the making of a picture, and does a masterful job of creating a spooky and unsettling atmosphere. Moreover, the grimly serious tone becomes increasingly dark and nightmarish as the plot unfolds, with an especially harrowing last third which culminates in a stunningly downbeat surprise ending. In addition, Shimizu deserves kudos for downplaying graphic gore and cheap jump scares in favor of mood and story; this is one of those slow-burning horror movies that requires quite a bit of patience on the viewer's part, but comes through with a positively gripping and terrifying pull-out-all-the-stops white knuckle conclusion. Kenji Kawai's eerie, shivery score and Takahide Shibanushi's fluid, graceful cinematography further enhance the flesh-crawling creepiness of this supremely scary and effective Japanese horror winner.

"We'll stay together forever."College Professor, Kazuya Omori(Shun Oguri)claims the lives of eleven victims(including his wife, son & daughter)before committing suicide in a hotel in 1970, the 45th day of Showa. Movie director Ikuo Matsumura(Kippei Shiina)is motivated to create a portrait which focuses on the lives of the victims, shying away from the murderer. In a sense, his screenplay, "Memories" fashioned from memoirs and items involving those unfortunate victims whose fates were sealed on that day, is a testament or way of honoring them. Actress Nagisa Sugiura(Yûka)is selected to portray the little girl who was killed by her father, Omori and as soon as the script is delivered to her, strange occurrences plague her. She sees memories of that horrifying day, often reliving them as if drawn into that specific time. A college student, Yayoi Kinoshita(Karina)is having dreams of a specific hotel, and in her pursuit for that location, realizes it is the hotel where the eleven murders took place. Are these specific events related or mere coincidence? We watch as the film dedicated to the victims is recreated with poor Nagisa experiencing more and more horrifying occurrences. Both Nagisa and Yayoi will discover terrifying truths about why they experience these visions..they do correlate with that hotel and we watch in disturbing detail as those events from 1970 unfold.I think both "Ju-on:The Grudge" & "Marebito" were stepping stones to reach Takashi Shimizu's masterpiece,"Rinne/Reincarnation". He takes "cryptomnesia phenomenon"(..or the idea of a "past life", viewed as a symptom)and spins it as an unpleasant horror tale where those who are the proponents("the human body is just a vessel")of this are stuck with having to carry the burden of reliving the same grim fates of their predecessors. The significance of the little boy's red ball, the little girl's eerie doll, and even the Professor's 8 mm video-recorder all are distinct images that Shimizu uses to optimum effect. In an amazing feat, Shimizu runs three different events occurring at the same time simultaneously, depicting the calculated events of Omori and those he killed in one sequential span of screen time..Nagisa running through a crucial scene for Matsumura, Yayoi finding the hotel she's been searching for and discovering more than she could ever want to know, and Omori's video-recorded carnage viewed by Nagisa's agent(after an incident Nagisa 'relived in her dream, she found Omori's video-camera in her bed!). The final closing minutes as Nagisa discovers whose reincarnated spirit represents her and those who seek after her is quite unsettling and haunting. Actually the whole movie is quite wicked and disturbing. This was an amazing experience..more horror films should be this smart and gripping. This film doesn't hold back on child violence, either, as we see what Omori actually does to his son and daughter with a large knife.