The Complex 2013

Asuka Ninomiya, [Atsuko Maeda], a nursing student, moves to a dilapidated apartment complex with her father Isao Ninomiya, [Masanobu Katsumura], mother Sachiko Ninomiya, [Naomi Nishida], and her younger brother Satoshi. She attempts to greet her elderly next-door neighbor Shinozaki with a polite hello, but the conversation doesn’t go far, and she soon befriends Shinozaki’s ward, Minoru Kinoshita, [Sosei Tanaka], a quiet boy who often stays hidden from adults.

From the moment she settles in, Asuka begins to notice strange phenomena that unsettles the calm of the new place. There are scratching noises in the walls and the distant sound of an alarm clock that seems to echo from Shinozaki’s flat, even when no one appears to be there. These eerie sounds are accompanied by a creeping sense that her own family is stuck in a daily loop, repeating the same actions and conversations as if time itself were looping around them. The tension escalates when she uncovers that Shinozaki died while scratching at the wall—and a detective reveals that his death went unnoticed for three days, a fact that feels almost impossible to accept.

With that revelation, a lingering sense of blame grows in Asuka’s mind: she senses that Shinozaki resents her for not finding him sooner, a guilt that gnaws at her as she tries to make sense of the haunting presence surrounding her. The atmosphere becomes heavier when a cleanup team arrives to clear Shinozaki’s flat. There, Asuka meets Shinobu Sasahara, [Hiroki Narimiya], a cleaner who has experience dealing with the supernatural. He explains a chilling idea: time works differently for the living and the dead, with the living moving forward while the dead remain trapped in the moment of their death, a notion that shakes Asuka’s sense of reality.

Shinobu and Sanae Nonomura, [Satomi Tezuka], a psychic friend of Shinobu’s, search for answers about Shinozaki’s haunting. They learn that Shinozaki’s spirit isn’t malevolent; he simply wants to express gratitude for being discovered and to warn Asuka that she is in danger. The investigation shifts when Asuka discovers she isn’t alone in the apartment’s past: Minoru is revealed to be haunted within the building, a boy who died years earlier after hiding inside a garbage incinerator during a game of hide-and-seek.

Asuka’s grip on reality loosens as she becomes increasingly withdrawn. She starts to view Minoru as a replacement for her dead younger brother, and the emotional strain pushes her toward the edge. Shinobu and Nonomura insist on an exorcism to release Minoru’s spirit from Asuka’s mind, hoping to spare her from a descent into madness. Even with their guidance, the volatile energies surge, and Minoru’s projection seems to threaten Shinobu’s own safety. When Minoru’s influence leads to a deadly trap, Shinobu himself becomes a target of the haunting, seemingly pulled into a memory of a garbage incinerator and burned alive in a moment he cannot escape.

The pressure on Asuka grows unbearable. She begins to scratch at the apartment floor and scream, a sign of the deep distress that has taken root in her psyche. Her foster parents return to care for her, but the comfort they offer isn’t enough to quell the echoes of the past. In the midst of this turmoil, Asuka clings to the memory of her dead family, including her brother’s doll, as the boundary between the living and the dead becomes increasingly blurred.

Throughout this escalating sequence of events, the line between mourning and possession blurs, and Asuka’s attempts to protect herself lead her deeper into the apartment’s tragic history. The story remains focused on her experience, the strange phenomena that surround her, and the difficult choices she must face as she navigates grief, memory, and a haunting that seems determined to claim her as its own.