AS A CHILD, Takashi Shimizu would lie awake at night, scared after reading comics about vampires and zombies. Now, at 33, he is the most revered Japanese director working in the horror genre ... and he still has trouble sleeping. But the restless nights are more a product of his search for perfection on the big screen.
'My wife tells me that I talk in my sleep and I dream about making movies,' Shimizu says. 'Maybe they're caused by a sense of frustration. I recently woke myself up shouting: 'Cut! Cut! Cut!''
Shimizu's hands flick from lighter to cigarette packet and back again, as he leans forward and tugs his trademark baseball cap lower on his head. He rarely pauses when he speaks, but his ideas are clear and precise.
He directs the same way, he says, and finds it hard to step back from making films. Other people may have put their feet up after breaking the US$100 million mark with their first Hollywood release. Instead, Shimizu is about to start filming the sequel to The Grudge.
'Ever since I was a child, I've enjoyed playing tricks on people, to make them jump or make them laugh, and even now that's what I want to do with my movies,' he says. 'It can be difficult to make a film fresh because each time you start with a collection of ideas in individual drawers; sometimes it can be hard to find drawers that have not been opened before. But as a filmmaker I have to come up with something new.'
Shimizu's latest movie, Reincarnation, hit Japanese screens last month and is due out in Hong Kong next week. The eerie tale - of a film being produced at a hotel north of Tokyo that was the scene of grisly murders in the 1970s - has received rave reviews, in particular for a twist near the end. But already his mind has moved on to the next project - The Grudge 2.
