The pieces of the puzzle in the <Loft>: a lady vomiting mud, the novelist Haruna Reiko, the new house in the countryside, the suspicious university facility in the back, another person’s unpublished manuscript, nightmares, the archeologist Yoshioka Makoto, the 1,000-year-old mummy, the lady who drinks mud for beauty, the eternally youthful body, suicide, murder, ghosts, a writer’s pride, plagiarism, an obsessive editor-in-chief, soul salvation, rebirth, delusion, the curse. Nakatani Miki and Toyokawa Etsushi head the ensemble cast. After having opened the 8th Pusan International Film Festival with <Doppelganger>, Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s latest film tells of a female novelist who has a mysterious and uneasy experience after moving into a warehouse-type home in the country. As she goes through inexplicable physical abnormalities and sees a suspicious man, her mental state slowly deteriorates. Restraining from over-stylizing, Kurosawa presents the fear that approaches her. It’s not a feast of excessive killing filled with blood and screams but, rather, it’s a process of scrutinizing the essence of fear and the psychology of the character. A quiet world with restrained sound effects and an economical use of the camera. At a place where reality and imagination coexist, the character acts more and more violently, while the worn-out inner walls of the building speak for the dryness of society, and nature’s scenery speaks out on behalf of the human and the ghost. It’s not boisterous. But it gives such shivers down the spine when you step foot into it. The world of fear presented by Kurosawa Kiyoshi has become even more profound in depth. Kwon Yong-min