Reincarnation

Reincarnation (2005) is a Japanese horror film from Takashi Shimizu you can watch online on iFILM. The tagline puts it plainly: death is only the beginning.

Nagisa, an up-and-coming actress, lands the lead in a movie about a massacre that tore through a country hotel thirty-five years earlier — a deranged professor who killed guests, staff and his own children before turning on himself. The deeper she sinks into the part, the more often a small girl with a toy doll turns up where she shouldn't be. Elsewhere, a student named Yayoi keeps waking from the same dream and starts digging into why. Yuka plays Nagisa as she unravels, with Shun Oguri in the cast.

Shimizu made his name with Ju-on: The Grudge, and this one runs on the same slow, creeping dread instead of jump scares. Released as part of the J-Horror Theater line, it took a prize at the Gérardmer fantasy festival. The fear leaks out of grainy videotape, glass doll eyes and the question of who you used to be. For fans of Asian horror that gets under the skin, it delivers. Stream Reincarnation (2005) online on iFILM.