Haze

Short claustrophobic horror movie from Shinya Tsukamoto, director of such genre-bending shockers a Tetsuo 1 & 2, Tokyo Fist and the brilliant A Snake Of June. The director himself stars in this strange fever dream of a movie in which a man wakes up locked in a cramped, lightless concrete room in which he can barely move.

Why is he there and where did he come from? We can see that he has a horrific stomach injury and that he is gradually bleeding to death. As he begins a desperate exploration of his nightmarish surroundings, the maze-like prison reveals horrendous visions of hell at each dead end he encounters.

One especially vile scenario finds our poor victim stuck in a narrow pass. The only way he can fit through the cramped space is to open his mouth and place it around a rusty length of pipe as the corridor is so small that it's the only way he can get his head into the space. It's painful to watch as he drags his teeth along the dirty metal in his desperation to escape.

Tsukamoto can always be relied upon to bring terrifying images to the screen, such as the salaryman slowly turning into metal in Tetsuo The Iron Man or the woman blackmailed into public displays of sexuality in A Snake Of June, and with Haze he combines all he nightmare visuals into one efficient horror flick.