Review:
Yukihiko Tsutsumi's "Forbidden Siren is based on Sonys Forbidden
Siren series for the Playstation2 and was released in Japan to
coincide with the launch of its sequel, the eponymic Siren 2. The
premise closely follows the very footsteps laid by the game without
digressing a whole lot. Roughly resembling a disturbing bedtime
story to keep rumbustious children in check, it spans a generation
of sinister, shadowy events from 1976 to present day Japan. Set
entirely in the desolate island-village of Yamajima, it hides a
dark and evil history. The inhabitants of the island were
terrorised and eradicated, except for a solitary man who was driven
to madness, convinced that he has seen evil in its purest
form.
Fast forward 30 years later and we see a whole new set of villagers
taking up the reins. A writer, Shinichi (Reo Morimoto) hopes a
change of surroundings will be beneficial to his family. So he
optimistically packs up and relocates his grown daughter, Yuki (Yui
Ichikawa), and his young and sickly son, Hideo (Jun Nishiyama) to
Yamajima. Yuki, fiercely protective of her brother, does not
welcome the change when she finds that her menacing neighbours do
not seem pleased with the foreign invasion. Aside from the friendly
Dr. Minamida (Naoki Tanaka), the new family does not interact much
with the people on the island. The story truly kicks up when a
neighbour warns Yuki to never leave her house alone at night, never
go up to the tower on the hill and never under any circumstances,
leave her house when she hears the siren.
Forbidden Siren, perhaps unsurprisingly, has the look and feel of
a horror videogame. It depends largely on its ghastly atmospheric
qualities, which excels in contrast to the rest of its production
values. With its very dark and uninviting environment, it sets the
stage to turn this remote island paradise right into hell on earth
just as easily as day turning into night. It draws certain
parallels with Silent Hill, another game-based film translation
that had more or less the same team working on both the original
Silent Hill game and the first Forbidden Siren game. It combines a
fair bit of the recently revived and oft-used horror elements such
as its large baroque sets, themes of estrangement and pianissimo
hints of foreboding to the heart-pounding screeches of shock.
Giving credit to the director, there are some smidgens of flair in
its execution to bring across the claustrophobia and xenophobia
that could have just as easily been charted with hackneyed chase
scenarios that would have been par for the course............
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