Paprika (2006)

Peculiar, flawed, engrossing, confusing, beautiful, deep, strangely soothing, unique and familiar are all adjectives that could describe this weird little gem. On the surface, it's not much more than a mixed soup consisting of bits of The Cell, a heaping helping of Ghost in the Shell, and just a tiny smidge of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Being a crime-drama centering on the convergence of dreams and schizophrenia will cause those kinds of justified comparisons. But it's in how the borrowed details of these narratives are arranged and presented that makes this film so uncommon. Since this is an animated film, the quality of effects and the restrictions of reality are nonexistent, and so the filmmakers go nuts trying to depict the crazy non-sequitur logic of subjective reality. On the whole, the segments that bend perception of what's real and what's imaginary are stunning, and the way that the internal logic of dreams is depicted is largely spot on. Where the film finds fault is in the utterly baffling way its story unfolds. If you pay enough attention to every single tiny, minute detail you will be able to figure out most of what actually happens, but even then some bits remain in the dark. As well, some of the characters' relationships and choices are either poorly explained or just never quite palatable. Regardless, the conclusion still brings a satisfactory close to most of the plot. As a movie that runs on the logic of non-logic, and as a film that juggles its familiar elements in a novel way, it's a wonderfully eccentric approach to disorientation.

7 out of 10.

Note: For the sake of all that's holy, watch this movie in its native Japanese. The English dub is terrible. Also, for anyone thinking of watching this, you might want to know that anaphylaxis is an "exaggerated allergic reaction to a foreign protein resulting from previous exposure to it."