Chaos review

Japanese pop culture has always been utterly fascinated with the shifting power games and painful rope-burns of bondage. In Chaos, director Hideo Nakata combines the S&M obsessions of Japan's softcore 'pink' films with the same kind of arse-puckering dread that he brought to Ringu and Dark Water.

Delving into the dark recesses of the human psyche familiar from countless film noirs, Chaos tells the story of a violent kidnapping in which ravishing trophy wife Saori (Miki Nakatani, star of Ringu) finds herself hog-tied in a suburban Tokyo apartment by a mysterious assailant (Masato Hagiwara). Twisting and turning through an endless succession of double- and triple-crosses, Nakata delivers an efficient, if rather familiar thriller, in which kidnapper and victim turn out to be far more dependent on each other than ever expected.

Sultry and suspenseful, it's easy to see why it's already been snaffled for a Robert De Niro-led American remake.