Kurosawa's work has always centered a gnawing realism within exploitation genres in the hopes of discovering the human within the surreal, or vice-versa; in Séance!nbsp;he reveals a psychological horror film that finds more creeping terror in married life than in the afterlife. Katsuhiko (Koji Yakusho) and Junko (Jun Fubuki) are a married couple like any other, if married couples all featured psychic wives who saw ghosts by a coffee-shop salad bar, and conducted séances out of the dining room while the oblivious husband took naps in the basement. When a kidnapped girl suddenly turns up in their house, Junko-desperate to be recognized as a true medium-decides to keep her hidden until she can "use" her psychic talents to help the police "find" her. An idea that bad is only bound to get worse, and Kurosawa tracks it to its inevitable, uncomfortable end, steadfastly avoiding typical genre shocks for a well-paced sense of dread and unease, all the more horrific for being the more recognizable. The film is loosely drawn from the same novel as the 1964 British film Séance on a Wet Afternoon.-Jason Sanders