Shintaro Katsu and Tatsuya Nakadai are without a doubt two of my favourite Japanese actors, to the point where I'm often happy to watch either of them in anything, so to see them both in the same movie, and have that movie be directed by Kobayashi, was a treat.
That being said: this is pretty mid-tier Kobayashi, so it never quite reaches the heights of Harakiri, The Human Condition, Kwaidan, or even Samurai Rebellion. He was at his best in the late 50s and 60s, and Inn of Evil definitely feels like it was made about a decade before its actual year of release.
But mid-tier Kobayashi still makes for a good watch, and while the plot is slow when it is there and for some stretches of the movie isn't really there, the visuals, acting, and overall tense atmosphere do a lot to make up for that, making this a film that's easy to recommend to Kobayashi fans already familiar with the aforementioned films.
That being said: this is pretty mid-tier Kobayashi, so it never quite reaches the heights of Harakiri, The Human Condition, Kwaidan, or even Samurai Rebellion. He was at his best in the late 50s and 60s, and Inn of Evil definitely feels like it was made about a decade before its actual year of release.
But mid-tier Kobayashi still makes for a good watch, and while the plot is slow when it is there and for some stretches of the movie isn't really there, the visuals, acting, and overall tense atmosphere do a lot to make up for that, making this a film that's easy to recommend to Kobayashi fans already familiar with the aforementioned films.