A chilling, layered portrait of fame and its psychological consequences. A few predictable moments and a few indecipherable ones blemish the portrait, but not enough to detract from its total effect.

Constant twists, however murky, keep viewers on their toes and looking over their shoulders. The story floats ghostlike between "reality," pop culture facades and the paranoid imaginations of its characters.

While the characters are intricately drawn psychologically and placed carefully in context, the disconcerting detail of not knowing whose head we're in at any given moment makes it tough to connect with any character. Also, Mima's naivete is only sporadically believable, and her repeated victimization wears thin.

Strikingly un-cute, as anime goes, but effectively so. Though some scenes are fairly mundane, the sight of hefty Rumi stuffed into a frilly red idol dress, flailing and bloody in the streets, captures the film's blend of the absurd, the worshipped and the terrifying.

The script successfully conveys Japan's idol singer phenomenon, but the dialogue occasionally hits bumps.

Mima's giggly American dub is an acquired taste - while her voice alters disarmingly according to which persona she takes on, her innocence sometimes comes off as dippy rendering certain exclamations random and disjointed.

Together with splendidly eerie music, the menu shows footage of the creative team sketching and animating "Perfect Blue." The extras menu is set up like the fictional web site Mima's Room. It contains footage of Cham, in the studio, recording the film's theme song as well as interviews with Japanese and American voice actors

Mima films a graphic rape scene and participates in a very revealing photo shoot.

For no apparent reason other than that "Lambs" is also a psychological thriller, allusions abound, from the plot of the detective show Mima acts in to a scene with blood dripping from the roof of an elevator.

Unlike his American counterpart, this hooded stalker digs technology. But his angst ricochets like that of the much-sketched misanthrope. Hey, someone's got to balance out the abundance of sprightly singers in matching dresses.

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