Despite not having one scene where something ill-defined and much less pleasant to look at jumps at the viewer in that "Boo" gesture -- a requisite and staple of modern horror -- Kiyoshi Kurosawa's KAIRO is an unnerving collection of disturbing images that are so freakish in nature as to make the skin creep in bouts of goose-flesh. All throughout, there's this escalating dread that like the slow advance of these people who are not quite "there", and it just keep on tightening its noose, as if asking one to put the DVD on pause or maybe even turn it off altogether. And for someone like me who keeps on stating that the horror genre is dead, this just made me eat my words.<br /><br />For years, horror movies have been about the way we encounter the supernatural, and the way it haunts us. All of the modes of employ have been used up and exist only as backdrop. There are no longer haunted houses where an ancient curse befell a family -- though I may have to cross that out as JU ON is exactly about that. No longer do Dracula or the Werewolf or Frankenstein (and a huge roster of other monsters) scare us, and the more esoteric entries into its web are stale. It was only time when what we do use on a daily basis -- phones, faxes, printers, television, and of course the World Wide Web -- would be the harbinger that could thin the layers separating us from those who are in another dimension and create an escalating panic.<br /><br />Two stories play themselves out until they dove-tail at the right moment in KAIRO. The first one concerns Michi, a girl working at a plant store in Tokyo. She notices that a co-worker, Taguchi, hasn't shown up for work in a week, and decides to check in on him. When she arrives at his apartment, he seems fine to her, but when she goes searching for a particular disk she needs, he hangs himself. Later on Michi and two other co-workers notice that within Taguchi's files there is a strange picture of his own room and what seems to be Taguchi standing still to the side of his computer, which is also showing the same image. They notice a face on a second computer, and a blow-up shows it to be that of Taguchi's, blankly staring out.<br /><br />Yabe then receives a phone call from Taguchi -- which is impossible -- and goes to his apartment to find Taguchi's body gone (of course) except for a black smear on the wall where he was found dead. As he leaves, he sees a door framed in red tape which catches his attention, so much that he makes the mistake of opening it. Once he does, he has one frightening encounter, one of the strangest, and scariest, I've ever seen in horror movies.<br /><br />It seems that within Taguchi's disk seems to contain a horrific virus that is spreading rapidly, causing mass suicides all throughout Tokyo. One in particular is gruesome even when seen from a distance as Michi is on the phone: a woman throwing herself off a high tower, her body hitting the floor in a flat thud.<br /><br />The second story makes itself present by introducing itself as another young man's incursion to the Internet. Ryosuke is getting his Internet installed on his computer, but the package seems to have a malfunction: immediately he is introduced to a bizarre website that presents images of people in the act of being alone in their bedrooms, languid, tired, on the veer of terrified. A prompt ("Would you like to see a ghost?") freaks him out and he disconnects the computer immediately, but it turns itself on again, and an unsettling image of a person, his head covered in a black bag, plays itself.<br /><br />What neither of them know is that from the other side, something has seeped its way into the world of the living. It is malevolent in ways that is only hinted at, as the dead feed off the life-force of those who are alive and literally turn them into ash. One explanation points at something that began almost innocuously -- a seed -- but has grown to such size that it is now using computers as a way to filter its way through and walk among us. Kurosawa inter-cuts this explanation with one extremely queasy image: that of an empty room lit in a sick-green light, as an apparition materializes. That as well as many, are what make KAIRO so overwhelmingly terrifying.<br /><br />Where KAIRO may limp just a little is in its plot pacing and decisions made by its characters. For example, computer geek Harue's (Koyuki) own crucial left turn is an exclamation point of logic but an overpowering descent into virtual hell seen in low resolution video, complete with hoots and clicks and her terrified smile of relief as she embraces something unspeakable. Despite this, it is drenched in sepia tones and suffocating anxiety -- it's the tension that doesn't find an automatic release, but gets stronger and stronger, without stopping for a rest. And nothing is so frightening as to see the vaguely formed image of a man moving so freakishly towards you as you are unable to react, and once he is up and close, all you see are his eyes, staring, quite alive, as he tells you he is real.