Reincarnation 2005

Norihasa Omori (Atsushi Haruta)—a professor bent on uncovering the mysteries of reincarnation—travels to a local hotel in 1970 and records himself committing a brutal slaughter: eleven lives, including guests, staff, and his own children. He then dies by his own hand, leaving behind a controversial piece of footage that dissolves into the ether and vanishes from memory. The act is chilling in its certainty, a calculated rite meant to probe what lies beyond death, and its disappearance stirs a quiet puzzle that future generations will chase.

Thirty-five years later, Ikuo Matsumura (Kippei Shiina), a horror filmmaker, resolves to make a film about the massacre. As the production draws near, Nagisa Sugiura (Yûka)—the actress cast to portray Omori’s daughter Chisato—begins to be haunted by the victims’ spirits. Her nights fracture into vivid nightmares, and she experiences unsettling hallucinations that blur the line between fiction and the past. Amid the creeping dread, she stumbles upon an old film camera that resembles the one Omori used, a relic that seems to unlock something ancient and ominous within the project.

In the midst of these eerie premonitions, Yayoi Kinoshita (Karina)—a college student drawn into the project—meets Yuka Morita (Marika Matsumoto), another actress who had auditioned for Ikuo’s film. Yuka claims she remembers things from a “past life” and shows Yayoi a birthmark that appears to echo signs of strangulation. The unsettled atmosphere thickens as unseen presences insinuate themselves, and soon Yuka is seized by ghostly forces that drag her away, leaving Yayoi with more questions than answers and a growing sense that the line between cinema and the supernatural is dangerously thin.

Yayoi’s research leads her to Ayumi Omori (Miki Sanjō), the massacre’s lone survivor and Omori’s wife. Ayumi explains that Omori had become obsessed with the idea that the body is merely a vessel, a vessel that could be emptied and reused by another presence after death. Her testimony adds a chilling layer to the myth surrounding the killings and hints at why the film’s cast might be drawing on forces they don’t fully understand.

As filming progresses, Nagisa’s hallucinations intensify. Her agent reviews the camera—the very instrument that holds Omori’s murders—expecting a straightforward artifact, only to find it contains a loop of events that seem to reenact themselves in real time. When the film begins to play, Nagisa and the other performers appear to step into the roles they portray, and the people she sees begin transforming into those roles before her eyes. The victims drift toward her as she makes a desperate escape, sprinting through the town while her agent watches everything unfold through Omori’s point of view, a perspective that becomes increasingly unreliable and claustrophobic.

In a climactic moment, Nagisa is cornered in a shop and seizes a shard of glass to end her life. She gazes into the window and sees Omori’s face staring back at her, a mirror of the original crime that now seems to foretell her own fate. Her agent watches, witnessing Omori reveal Nagisa’s reflection in the glass rather than his own before he cuts his throat. The boundary between killer and victim blurs as Nagisa slowly begins to reenact Omori’s suicide, only to be halted by a malevolent force in the form of a doll that utters a chilling claim: they will be together forever.

Behind the scenes, a group of executives reviews Nagisa’s take on the film. Among them is Ayumi, the survivor who carries the pain of the past into the present. As the production spirals toward its close, Nagisa collapses, her body shaking and her voice raw with fear, as crew members rush to assist. The finale unfolds in a mental ward, where Nagisa is restrained in a full-body wrap, still haunted by the souls of Omori’s children. Ayumi appears at the door, peering in as Nagisa’s world tightens around her. She passes Nagisa the toys the children loved— a red ball and a doll—signaling a eerie continuity between the living and the dead. Nagisa’s scream echoes down the corridor, but a sinister, almost serene smile spreads across her face as the ghosts close in, leaving the audience with a haunting image of possession, memory, and the price of peering too deeply into the past.