The best Ken Mitsuishi’s thriller movies

Kaiji Ito moves to Japan after graduating from high school. Unable to find a job and frustrated with society at large, Kaiji spends his days gambling, vandalizing cars, and drinking booze. Two years later and his life is no better. A debt collector named Endo arrives to collect money owed. The debt collector offers two choices to Kaiji: spend 10 years paying off his loan or board a gambling boat for one night to repay his debt & possibly make a boat load of money. Could the debt collector Endo actually be setting up Kaiji? One way or another, for Kaiji it's going to be the night of his life.

Seven years after the death of his wife, widower Shigeharu seeks advice on how to find a new wife from a colleague. Taking advantage of their position as a film company, they stage an audition. Interviewing a series of women, Shigeharu is enchanted by the quiet Asami. But soon things take a twisted turn as Asami isn’t what she seems to be.

An aspiring hair dresser (Kuriyama) becomes the infatuation of a tricophilic man who sells hair extensions to nearby hair salons. The source of the hair is the corpse of a girl whose dead body continues to grow beautiful, voluminous, black hair that comes alive, driving those who use the extensions insane or killing them.

Narumi is on bad terms with her husband, Shinji, when, one day, Shinji goes missing. He comes back a couple of days later, but he seems like a totally different person, and he is now gentle and tender. He goes for a walk every day. Meanwhile, journalist Sakurai covers the story of a family that was brutally murdered, when an unexplained phenomenon takes place. Shinji Kase tells his wife that he came to Earth to invade.

A group of terrorists has taken hold of the largest dam in Japan. They also capture the workers as hostages, and demanded $5 billion yen from the government with a 24 hour deadline in exchange for the lives of the hostages. To make things more complicated, there was a snowstorm and no one can get in or out near the area. Fortunately, the terrorists did not capture Togashi, the dam controller, and he is the only person who can rescue those hostages from the terrorists...

This atmospheric, violent thriller revolves around a hitman called Kyoji who has just killed his lover, Seiko. She was the wife of Kyoji’s boss, Wiwat, who, when he heard about the affair, hired his rival to murder the unfaithful Seiko. Kyoji hides himself away on a cruise ship bound for Thailand. On board he meet a mysterious beauty named Noi. A passionate affair ensues. Their destinies are more interwoven than Kyoji and Noi could ever imagine. As Kyoji fights for his life and struggles to cope with mounting feelings of guilt he discovers the truth about the secretive Noi. Furious, wounded and thirsting for revenge, Kyoji might even make it home again.

Set along a backdrop of a fictitious second world war at an international city in Asia. In Japan, Lieutenant Colonel Yuki (Yusuke Iseya) recommends the creation of spy training school "D Kikan". Meanwhile, Kato (Kazuya Kamenashi) is facing capital punishment for his refusal to follow a superior's order. Kato is then scouted by "D Kikan". He goes through a harsh training regiment and faces his first mission as a spy. In order to seize American ambassador Graham's confidential documents "Black Note." Kato infiltrates into an international city. A battle to gain possession of the "Black Note" ensues between Kato, a mysterious woman named Rin (Kyoko Fukada), the British Spy Agency, the Soviet Spy Agency and the radical army in Japan.

Set in 1995. A helicopter, operated remotely, is hovering in the sky over a nuclear power plant. The power company, prefectural government and media all receive a fax. The fax contains a threat that if the nuclear power plant is not taken offline the helicopter will be dropped. 8 hours is given as the deadline. Making the situation even more dire, a young child is in the helicopter.

A man gets involved in a kidnapping scheme with the wife of a wealthy businessman. She lets herself be tied up and confined in his house while he sends the ransom demand. When he returns home that night, however, he finds her laying dead on the floor. In a panic he buries her body deep in the woods and tries to return to his ordinary life. One day, he thinks he spots her walking down the street. Is his mind playing tricks on him, or has she somehow returned from the grave?

A story of the unexplainable things that inflict sheer terror on human beings and how they leave victims psychologically devastated. It is as much a true horror film as it is a psychological drama.

ER doctor Tsuyoshi Matsuoka receives a patient with a virus unlike anything he's seen before. His symptoms include high fever, convulsions, vomiting of blood and multiple organ failure. Could this be a new form of influenza or is it some other variety of virus? As the situation worsens and more cases begin arriving, a medical officer from the World Health Organization named Eiko Kobayashi is dispatched to the area. At the rate the virus is spreading, the entire city’s transportation system and infrastructure would be brought to a halt within 3 months. Within 6 months it could spread to tens of millions of people--reaching a death toll far worse than any war.

An ex-journalist Masuda whose article caused a scandalous fatality now works at a small factory. He learns that his colleague Suzuki is a former convict who killed some children back in middle school. Trying to get back his old job, Masuda secretly starts to write a piece on Suzuki while befriending him. The more he learns about his colleague, however, the more Masuda remembers his younger self, a boy who triggered his classmate's suicide.

Hiroshi Hamano, a professor at a medical university, is found dead. Going by the results of the autopsy, it appears he committed suicide by jumping off a roof, but going by eyewitness testimony and physical evidence at the scene, Detective Kamei suspects murder. A ticket for a train trip around Japan is found in the professor's pocket. However, nobody then could have known the shocking truth hidden behind the tour the dead man was supposed to attend...