Transcending Dimensions (Theatrical Screening)

My first time at Frightfest and unlike most of the people I saw bedecked in lanyards, I was apparently one of the few there not for the whole festival or with a day pass but for a single film (more on this later) and for what? One non-horror entry into the festival, 9 Souls and Hanging Garden director Toshiaki Toyoda’s alleged final film as director, Transcending Dimensions. 

A Monk, Rosuke (Yosuke Kubozuka) has disappeared. Part of the sinister wolf-priest, Master Hanzo's (Chihara Jr.) cult. Rosuke’s lover, Nonoka (Haruka Imo) hires an assassin, Shinno (Ryuhei Matsuda) to kill Master Hanzo, and is caught in sorcerous battles between the monk and his master, and Rosuke may have just transcended reality to the far reaches of the universe or another dimension. 

Trying to explain Transcending Dimensions is a bit like trying to explain the end of 2001 (something that is very pertinent here). You can describe it to an extent but the exact relevance of it is less tangible and far more slippery. This suits Toyoda as a filmmaker because if there is one word I’d use to describe his work in general it is visceral. He has that ability to take images and forms, even if you don’t always get what’s going on, and create out of it a mood and a tone that hit you at a purely emotional level. Exactly what’s going on at times in the film is not always straightforward, the transition across dimensions is often preceded by the blowing of a huge conch. Why or how or even if it causes it? It's never really explained but then it never really matters because it’s a film of feeling. This is important because the story and what we see are perhaps never quite as out there as some descriptions of it have suggested. Much of the story takes places in and around Master Hanzo’s temple (if such you can call it) even if of course we are taken to the outer reaches of dimensions of space, to a finger-shaped spaceship and a fractured hall of mirrors, a kaleidoscopic other-place. But as to what is always happening, if “it” is happening, is not always easy to judge, but in a good way. Similar in style to a David Lynch film, where it is not disconnected nonsense as might first appear, but controlled, curious and engaging. We always have to question what we see: for instance Nonoka may already be dead, be about to die or may be alive... If so, how and why can she hire Shinno? Does it matter? Not in the least because the characters engage in a dance around each other, overlaid with sound and imagery that merge together into that visceral cinematic experience. 

Being a Toyoda film there is of course grim humour. Master Hanzo goads those that fall under his malign spell to cut off their finger as a means to transcend. Ironically there may be truth in this if perhaps the reality to Master Hanzo is a calm sadism. One of Hanzo’s antagonists is Teppei (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), who tries and fails in sorcerous attacks upon Hanzo and there’s a manic humour here, which is unlike the more surreal moments of the film: Teppei earlier opening the door to the toilet to find a naked woman on it. Quickly apologising he closes the door only for her to open it and note it’s OK, she’s just the seat warmer. It makes sense when considering the mood of the film, the oddness of it all plus the sense of weird cultishness surrounding the deeply lupine Hanzo. 

Though the film may unfold slowly – the title credits don’t appear until close to midway through the 90-minute film – often when it goes full 2001 "The Ultimate Trip" moment, Toyoda definitely lets rip visually and sonically. The sound is precise, often using loud percussive elements or else ambient ululations and deep bass at a seriously high volume, such that when the Blu-Ray comes our way you'll need to play it through good speakers to get the full effect. Sound plays a key part in how Toyoda sucks you into this weird sorcerous power game as Rosuke comes back to Earth in a clinic checking out his brainwaves that have transcended what the brain can do, and Shinno, too, the darkly clad, sleek assassin who finds himself as capable with strange magical invocations as his peers. 

Really, don’t ask me what the hell the film is about as it really isn't clear, but it may not really matter as it all comes back to the effect the film has on us as the viewers, watching and feeling what Toyoda lays out before us. The director's casting, for the main, reunites him with a set of actors he's worked with time and again so you suspect there's an ease with them slotting into their roles: Chihara Jr.'s is wonderfully vicious and malicious as lupine Master Hanzo, adding more than a tinge of the absurdism to his role; Matsuda’s assassin exudes a calm presence; Kubozuka’s monk at the end of the universe (or not) slowly enters our story, becoming a force of his own and Shibukawa’s Teppei, as a slightly comic priest doomed in his battles with Hanzo is equally mesmerising.

I suspect Transcending Dimensions is a film you need to watch more than once to really allow it to sink in. It also requires an audience that doesn't have just the wrong percentage of idiots. I started noting the film was shown at Frightfest, with many people there with day passes and this means of course people watching films they may not always like and while most of the audience were attentive and thoughtful, sadly I had the idiot contingent near me, constantly getting up, leaving, returning, leaving, returning, making no attempts not to interrupt those there to watch the film and sometimes they were returning, leaving, returning, leaving not within minutes but practically within seconds, and the loop ongoing, maybe they were trying to transcend dimensions, they definitively were close to transcending my patience, and this is another reason why I feel I need to watch the film again, in a space where idiots were not kicking your seats, blocking your view, sniggering at each other because Transcending Dimensions is a Toshiaki Toyoda film, a visceral film, sometimes visually arresting, aurally all encompassing and where you need to allow it to wash over you, suck you in and finally eject you to the farthest corners of reality or perhaps to wherever you are sat. 

Apparently Toyoda has said this will be his final film, let us hope that it is not. 

But if it is, Third Window are planning to release the film in the spring of 2026, so even if you cannot transcend dimensions at the cinema you’ll be able to get their bBu-Ray then.