Did You Bit, Or Get Bitten?: Sector 7 (2011)

I am known for my over defense of South Korean cinema, because to accept that bad movies emerge out of their highly transgressive and decidedly evocative country would be to admit anything short of perfection, even though I am aware that South Korea, much like the other major players in the state of world cinema, are equally subject to rushed production, blockbuster bait films and a general concern for the capital success of a film over its aesthetic, social product.  This, of course, does not entirely mean that a film cannot be enjoyable, I will openly admit to finding far more pleasure in many popcorn movies than many, but again South Korean cinema manages to make this slightly different in the existence of The Host, Bong Joon-ho's 2007 monster movie, from which a film like Sector 7 is undoubtedly attempting to emerge.  The Host is a spectacle film that uses its heavy CGI reliance to overlay one of the most earnest and poignant looks at contemporary family issues, transcendent of nationhood or class.  Indeed, Sector 7 is a film that was shot with the intent of being seen in the third dimension and since my viewing was done in the home, it does lose that sense of excitement that pushed something like Pacific Rim from simply being alright to being outwardly engaging and thrilling.  Yet, even aware that I was losing a degree of the cinematic offering without the extra dimension, I was still quite aware of the way the film bookended its film with the special effects as a means to mask a half-hearted attempt at considering issues of group unity, capitalist consumption and to a further degree the validity of gender divides in a "post-feminist" society.  I use the word mask very purposefully, because not only does the spectacle of the film consume any possibility of this becoming a key element in the narrative, it also uses the glossy sheen to hide the clear inability of the director and writer to formulate a clear commentary on its characters, becoming nothing more than a set of cookie cutter characters slowly falling victim to a giant beast.  Sector 7 borrows from many classics in this vein, yet manages to pick the worst elements from each.

After a brief introduction involving a man checking the integrity of an oil pipe in 1985, only to be attacked by something off screen, Sector 7 focuses on a group of oil riggers off the coast of South Korea who have been facing a rather bad string of outings, each time finding little to no oil.  The leader of the crew, while not the captain is Cha Hae-joon (Ha Ji-won) a tough around the edges woman, who despite her demeanor shares deep feelings with one of her other crew members.  When yet another drilling fails miserably, the captain explains to the crew and an infuriated Cha that they will be leaving Sector 7 in hopes of finding a new place to drill.  This idea is changed however when Cha's uncle arrives, a higher up in the oil refinery's ranks, he explains that they will continue their efforts here, while also working more closely with a marine biology project researching a new species of fish that was discovered during a failed drilling.  Confused, but not lacking in hesitancy, Cha and her crew take up their task with great fervor, until things become weird when during a routine line check, one of the divers' harnesses breaks leading him plunging into the dark abyss of the ocean right in front of Cha's eyes.  This odd and tragic occurrence only begins a series of unfortunate events including an apparent suicide, before it is realized that one of the previously studied fish has appeared to mutate into a destructive amphibian being that is devouring the crew members one by one.  While mounting a defense, it is revealed that Cha's uncle, along with the larger corporation, had been breeding this creature for its particular genetic similarities to unrefined oil, hoping to tap into it as a future source for fuel.  While frustration, Cha is afforded little time to confront the issue, as members of the group are continually being killed, eventually leading to the point when it is only Cha surviving to face off against the creature on the deck of their oil refinery.  Her quick thinking and motorcycle based elusiveness afford her an opportunity to bait the creature back below deck, using the very drill that exposed it to the surface to destroy it.  The film then closes with a panning of multiple oil refineries, explaining that the Sector 7 refinery is a real place, currently existing in a state of inactivity awaiting a divide between Japan and South Korea over who rightly owns the oil from the rig.

It is this unapologetic shift into the real in the closing moments that make Sector 7 a particularly frustrating viewing experience.  I am not opposed to genre films or blockbuster movies taking on serious and real topics, but it is usually done so from the onset, as opposed to purely being an addendum to a film that aside from location really shares nothing with its geopolitical issue.  I find this sort of haphazard dumping of social, gender, and political issues into a film like this not unwelcome, but problematically frustrating.  The film, assuming that it can distract viewers with a showiness, that at times is quite captivating even in a non-3D viewing, and in doing so it can flippantly throw narrative tropes at the wall hoping those viewing can overlook their non-sticky quality as they slide down the wall, at no point proving evocative or integral to a plot that proves nothing more than a glorified game of cat and mouse, wherein the cat is outwitted by the sentient mouse.  I understand that this could serve as the films greatest metaphor, in so much as the creature, purportedly existing purely from emerging out petroleum, is therefore an extension on the rampant destructive nature of consumerism within a capitalist framework, but the problem with this reading is that the characters are either set up as being to naive or intensely self aware, whereas, to refer back to The Host, the family on display takes the emergence of the monster, in all it implausibility, as though it were yet another issue for them to face collectively, dealing with it earnestly.  Blame it on the 3D veneer calling attention to the fabrication of the film, but I at no point thought the plot to be attempting anything profound, beyond simply attempting to set up viewers for the intense and showy chase scene that encompasses nearly forty minutes of the runtime.  Other readings also fall to the wayside in the face of misguided attempts at establishing grounding, most problematically the one centered on considering Cha as a female authority figure in the face of questioning masculinity, sure she saves the day and sure it is intense, but to whom does she prove this feat, when the questioning is not quite the same as that mounted against Ridley in say Alien, but is assumed to carry the same levity hear.  Sector 7 wants to be much more than its immaturity will allow.

Key Scene:  The jellyfish do look quite wonderful and were the only point where I truly wished I were watching the film in 3D.

Honestly, avoid this film and just watch The Host instead.

You Know It On Touch, Not On Sight: The Eye (2002)

I had originally slated another Pang Brothers film in the slot for this day in the marathon, but when doing some last minute perusing on my "to be watched" shelf which is in a constant state of caving in upon itself, I realized I already had one of their films waiting, one that was far more inclined to be read as a horror film than the one I had planned on viewing.  The film, The Eye, is perhaps most associated with its Jessica Alba remake some six years later, for which I have not seen, nor do I really care to.  However, my deep adoration for the last decade and some change of Asian horror films drew me to this without a moments hesitation, more so considering that this one navigates between a few different spaces of Asia, never making a clear distinction between the changes aside from dialects that most Western audiences, myself included, would be hard pressed to distinguish.  As such, there is a certain degree of privilege to the national viewer in a film like The Eye, which is not to say that it is distancing or alienating in its output.  The Eye is about as well made a thriller as one can ask for without completely detaching itself from the horror elements with which it borrows from liberally.  The Pang Brothers understand that what they have created is first and foremost a focus on one woman and her struggle to find meaning and purpose when her worldview is literally expanded in previously inconceivable ways, however, that does mean that there are not some genuinely creepy moments sprinkled throughout the film.  In fact, I would posit that this, a rather overlooked Chinese/Singapore horror thriller contains what may well be the scariest ghost appearance in any film I have ever encountered.  It is not a particularly ghoulish apparition, nor is it grotesque in any sort of body horror way.  It is unsettling because the directors make it non-apparent, indeed existing in the corner of the screen, as though it is almost scary to discover it than to not be aware at all.  In a world of post-modern horror genre films embracing the excess, The Eye in all its cinematic intensity and moments of truly spine chilling horror, manages to remind viewers that the scariest things are those only a few are privilege, nay, cursed to encounter.

The Eye focuses on Wong Kar Mun (Angelica Lee) a woman who has spent nearly all of her life blind after an accident in her youth left her so.  Yet, upon the information that a donor matching her type has recently been made available, her family, particularly her grandmother, rushes to get her an operation.  Although the other people in the space of her hospital room seem to fair far less in their sickness or troubles, Mun's operation is successful and with some basic rehabilitation and a pair of sunglasses she is capable of moving into the world with newly rediscovered sight.  However, her new vision-abled site is not quite as welcoming as she suspected, because where people were previously willing to help her navigate the spaces of her town, she now finds that people assume her completely capable of perfect vision, despite still struggling to completely see objects at time.  More so, her one passion as a violinist is trampled when she is kicked out of her former all blind orchestra, precisely because she is no longer blind.  If these issues were not enough, Mun begins to pick up floating entities and bodies emerging in her peripheral vision that simply should not exist, whether it be a man standing stoically in the middle of free way or a ghoulish mother and child floating into the space of a restaurant.  When her physical therapist and new found romantic interest becomes aware that perhaps her claims to be seeing entities beyond the dimensional space of normal perception, might be valid, he helps her to undertake a quest to find the donor.  This task of course proves quite troublesome since donor information is made decidedly confidential, however, the drive of both Mun and her doctor, lead them to Bangkok where it is discovered that the woman who previously held Mun's eyes was a social pariah because of her fatally accurate visions of death.  These uncontrollable visions led to the woman's suicide, thus affording Mun the eyes.  Helping to end the cycle of the unfortunate loss through a near perfect recreation of the suicide, Mun helps to put the woman's soul at ease.  Unfortunately, this does not necessarily end the visions for Mun who is confronted with one last series of death encounters, before she comes to lose the second sight, in a return to her original state of vision and, subsequently, her happiness.

Considering that I am currently working on a paper (which appears to be close to publication!) on the nature of disability in a certain big-budget super hero franchise, I am particularly keen as to when films productively deal with, or more so fail to deal with issues of confronting disability.  In a rare moment, The Eye manages to do the former and show a rather earnest look into what it means to be blind and, more importantly, how even when altered or corrected that previous blindness can still prove detrimental to one's world view, almost as if it were a very personalized consideration of the affect theory.  Mun finds considerable challenge in the act of expressing herself because how she sees the world is so distinctly different from the vision abled people she interacts with, whether it be her frustrated grandmother who no longer wants her child to be a burden, or her doctor who seems so attached to the medical elements of her blindness as to assume her every feeling and frustration without asking her opinion or interpersonal struggles.  Similarly, the film also considers what happens to a disabled person should they find themselves fortunate enough to become able bodied.  Indeed, Mun is removed from her friendship with blind persons through her new found privilege, but it is a reminder that even when she is afforded sight she still has the memory of a time when darkness was all she could sense.  Indeed, the film takes on yet another layer of disability narrative in how "one sees the world," particularly once Mun can see and even when she is capable of seeing, it is through her other senses as the doctor notes.  Finally, what makes the film an absolutely intriguing study of disability is in how the work navigates the post-operation sight of Mun, who invariably pulls from her former blind self in her description of the world and even her instantly matured sight is seen as something that is still burgeoning.  As such, her extrasensory vision, is deemed the exact opposite at first, precisely because she is still othered as a result of a now extinct disability.  The cinematic conventions of this film provide the final element of pro-disability narrative by reaffirming the possible visions a person learning to see might encounter, whether it be flickering lights, or blurry background imagery.

Key Scene:  Subway train ride.  If you watch this keep your eyes peeled (I realize the brilliance in this moment of the film now as I write this).  If you do, prepared to be scared beyond belief.

This DVD is super cheap on Amazon.  Buy a copy, it is well worth the cost.

I Want To Stay Sane Enough To Recognize The Terror: Marebito (2004)

I have seen many Tartan Asian Extreme releases, in most cases entirely predicated upon their being Korean films, which means that I will give them consideration for this fact alone.  While about a third of the films are generally watchable, most prove a bit reductive, or exploitative in ways that neither push forward genre conventions or prove watchable even in a disconcerting manner.  Even fewer suffer from the problem of wild mislabeling in their advertisement, or at least that was the case with Marebito, a film that sat on my "to view" shelf for ages because from the looks of its vague, torture porn/vampire cover it was something I would immediately hate upon popping it into my DVD player.  Yet, in the case of this film, the DVD cover and vague description on the back do little to truly speak to the excellent work which presents itself on the film.  An entirely digital film, Takashi Shimizu, manages to meld together various types of moving images, whether they be video recordings, television images or even the diegetic space of the film itself to consider what is seen by the human eye and, more interestingly, what presences beyond human perception can emerge when a new form of technology can achieve heightened senses.  Doubling also as a narrative of descent into the labyrinth of madness, Marebito becomes a work so purposefully expressionist that it has a degree of landscape painting, at times indicative of the work of Caspar David Friedrich or the wonderful nightmarish spaces of a F.W. Murnau film, more so considering the twisting of the plot in ways that make Dr. Caligari seem like a straightforward story.  Marebito, much like post-2000 J-horror films, challenges the conventions of horror, but does so while also undermining the entire under process of filmmaking in the process.

Marebito focuses on Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto) a freelance cameraman who travels about the city of Tokyo chronicling items of interest, compounding them together, along with hours of surveillance footage to create a bizarre sort of viewing room in his house full of televisions and computer screens constantly streaming various imagery, both of a mundane and tragic nature.  Perhaps one of the more unusual things in Masuoka's viewing is that of a woman staring out a window, of which he constantly talks to about her existence.  However, when Masuoka uncovers footage of a man stabbing himself in the forehead, he becomes obsessed with the nature of his fear and curious as to what the man was starring at so intensely right before committing the act.  When the image breaks free of its conventions and directly acknowledges Masuoka's looking, he becomes even more scared and begins a quest into the underworld of Tokyo to find answers.   With his camera in tow, Masuoka discovers a world of underground dwellers known as Dero, who seem more like bestial vampires than humanoid figures.  When he comes across the deceased form of the body he watched stab itself on screen, Masuoka's descent takes on new levels, particularly when he emerges from his descent into a new world of lush colors and dreary skylines, where he finds one of the presumed Deros, this time a female, chained to the wall naked.  Confused, but curious, Masuoka takes the woman back to his apartment and begins keeping her as a pet, an act that quickly takes a dark turn, not only for its possession elements, but because the girl, who Masuoka names F, can only be nourished by being given blood to consume, finding particular enjoyment in human blood.  This leads to Masuoka's life falling apart and his alienating, in some times very harmful ways, from the rest of the world, while also becoming aware of his own heightened perceptions after his descent into the darkness, leading to a sacrificial act on his part so grand that it causes him to assumedly plunge into the depths of the labyrinth completely and irreversibly.

To call Marebito a bizarre reconsideration of Plato's Allegory of the Cave would be a bit of a misnomer, even if Masuoka does represent a character bringing an understanding of "the light" to a group living in the shadows.  Indeed, it is far more inclined to pull from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, particularly since the narrative does have a winding maze like quality about it and the descent into the labyrinth is rather obvious.  Masuoka, however, is far from the valiant figure of Theseus who manages to slay a minotaur and win the love of the girl.  Instead, Masuoka is almost a hybrid of the two tales, a man questing a deeper understanding of perception by coming to face that which is truly frightening, hoping to share in the vision of the suicidal man, thus becoming hyper aware of the world that surround him.  Masuoka certainly achieves this quest, but it is also at the cost of much of the world around him, clearly not the most healthy of individuals Masuoka shells himself up in his home, clearly malnourished and decidedly lacking in proper hygiene.  It is not until his ability to sequester himself from the world around him is question, via his wife whose presence inexplicably emerges into the narrative that things truly take a turn.  The Prozac popping Masuoka tosses away his pills, affording him a new awareness of his surroundings, realizing that even the most normal seeming of individuals are existing in a state of fractured self, one that is tied to the digital world in ways that are visible.  The quickly maddening Masuoka also begins to pick up the creatures navigate the liminal space of the world both through the lens of his film camera, as well as in the shadows of the street, his psychosis, or perhaps his "transcendence" into darkness proving the necessary lens to capture the world in a new and decidedly troublesome way.  This is only one element within all the other considerations at work in Marebito, including narratives of voyeurism, depression, the place of technology in modern Japan and relationships in a broad scale.  It works on these levels brilliantly and jarringly.

Key Scene:  The walking through the streets of Tokyo when Masuoka's perceptions begin to falter is haunting, in a way only digital filmmaking could invoke.

This DVD is pretty cheap on Amazon, but it might still be worth renting first, particularly since I am still uncertain as to whether or not this is actually a brilliant film.

Together, We Can Turn This World To Fucking Rust: Testuo, The Iron Man (1989)

I should begin by explaining why I have been a bit less consistent in blog posts over the past two weeks or so.  Firstly, I decided to do the 100 films for June challenge which has meant keeping a pretty consistent viewing schedule going, one that has taken up much more time than I expected, particularly since I included a considerable amount of films that were on the lengthier side.  I would think about posting and then get distracted by a back-to-back feature of some daunting two hour works.  This, of course, is only half the reason, since I still find myself allotted with a good bit of time in between.  Aside from my regular summer job I have also been given the incredibly fortunate opportunity to be part of a upcoming book, in which I will have an academic article published in and it has meant doing some heavy duty research and the like, again taking up more time than planned.  I am being vague with it until it is a certainty, but once that is official you better believe I will be posting in regards to it her on the blog.  All that out of the way I have come with a film so intensely its own and indicative of the possibilities of post-modern cinema as to assure it would be a great cinematic experience for me, made all the more excellent by it being one of the classics of post-sixtes Japanese cinema, while also existing before the big push towards J-horror in recent years.  The film I am referring to is the maddening and demented, industrially fueled Tetsuo, the Iron Man, directed by Shinya Tsukamoto and had been a film that was long on my shame list for films that I had yet to encounter.  I knew I needed to see it upon it also receiving mention on The Story of Film documentary and boy am I glad I finally made it around to this work.  It is parts David Lynch paranoia in human interaction, part Cronenbergian sexual/bodily violence nightmare and even pulls heavily from Teshigahara, for some of its more oeneric, ghastly elements that are heavily influenced by its Japanese cultural milieu.  While I can begin to draw these deserved comparisons, Tetsuo still very much stands as its own work, one with such a fevered editing pace and visually jarring schizophrenic nature that it is really a surprise the film has not been championed as a horror classic all its own.

Tetsuo, the Iron Man begins with images of a man known only through the reveal of the closing credits to be The Metal Fetishist.  Played by the director, The Metal Fetishist is shown running pieces of metal ocrros his teeth and jabbing pieces of steel into his exposed flesh, until he realizes that these actions have allowed for maggots to invade his wounds.  Disgusted the fetishist runs out into the street and is immediately rundown by a driver and his girlfriend, simply known as The Man (Tomorowo Taguchi) and The Woman (Kei Fujiwara).  Fearing for his well-being and the trouble that could be caused by the vehicular manslaughter they dump the fetishist's body into a ravine and go on with their life as though it did not occur, however, when The Man begins to notice tiny pieces of metal protruding through his face, as though it were beard stubble, it becomes clear that the fetishist has moved beyond the grave to exact a physical revenge upon his murderer.  The man, who is then shown attempting, unsuccessfully, to retain some normalcy at his life in business, as well as with his relationship to his girlfriend, begins to have his body taken even more over by the metal, which grows out through intravenous means and even begins to reproduce itself in the form of sexual organs, all to the dismay of the few onlookers throughout the film, as well as the viewers.  Eventually, after a frightening nightmare in which The Man's girlfriend takes on her own metal form, his evolving body reacts by destroying the theoretical threat of The Woman in a violently sexual manner, followed almost immediately by the emergence of the fetishist from the newly laid corpse.  The Man, now completely formed into The Iron Man begins a battle with the fetishist over the industrial and urban spaces of Japan eventually merging into one collective bodily form that agrees to undertake the task of destroying the entire world by turning it into rust.  The new form more insane and layered in various extremities takes to the streets of Japan at a frenetic pace as the term GAME OVER appropriately flashes upon the screen.

The body transformed and mutated is certainly something that is not unfamiliar to this blog, particularly as it is tied to deeply troubling psychological aspects, as is the case in a beloved film of mine I'm A Cyborg But That's OK (also of which I plan to juxtapose with Tetsuo for a presentation), nor is it entirely new to the world of cinema itself, stretching at least back to the themes of Fritz Lang's Metropolis which looks at the possibilities of alteration and simulacra when considering the human body.  Of course, what makes Tetsuo so particularly engaging is that it takes this theme and these images which are decidedly entrenched within the realm of science fiction and appropriates them to be both within their original genre framework, while also reflecting upon what spaces of the horrific and grotesque, one might even say carnivalesque that a cyborg body could inhabit.  Furthermore, when extending this idea of cyborg, one must remember that it is often the case, narratively speaking, that these human-like robots are made entirely of synthetic materials which are metals and the like altered to appear to be the anatomy of a human body.  A case could certainly be made that in Tetsuo the exact opposite is occurring, wherein The Man's body is taking its fleshy human parts and altering them to achieve a degree of metallic perfection, or a fetishistic ideal, helping to explain the decidedly sexual nature of many of the encounters, or more aptly put confrontations in this film.  Much like the aforementioned Cronenberg films this invasion comes at the aftermath of some sort of high-level guilt experienced by a character, whether it be the failure to protect something or a forced and unsuccessful repression of natural desires, in the case of Tetsuo it appears to be some bizarre combination of the two.  The Iron Man transformation occurs as a result of the paranoia and guilt that emerges after committing a murder, even if accidental and this troubling occurrence, allows for other walls to be let down, particularly tumultuous and tense relations with those close, ones that can lead to violent and penetrating actions that range from emotionally harmful to physically violent.  Tetsuo is as much a metaphor as it is experimental art, moving, much like the title character between the emotive concerns for a simple existence and the industrialized demand for constant growth and upward expansion at the cost of nothing.

Key Scene:  The rust and stainless steel monologue is powerful stuff.

The DVD's available are both out of print, therefore they catch a lofty price, however, one is available on Netflix and is definitely worth renting.

I'm Sorry, Mommy Was Wrong: The Red Shoes (2009)

I was a bit bummed as to not waiting to include the Powell-Pressburger film The Red Shoes into this month of films, however, I was able to find a film that I assumed only shared the name of the British classic in a South Korean film that I had been longing to see of the same name.  While it is certainly not a remake, or a homage for that manner, it does appear to borrow heavily from the Anderson fairy tale of the original, particularly in the element of a pair of shoes being the jumping off point for an individuals descent into madness.  While The Red Shoes is not the greatest South Korean film I have come across, it is not entirely an awful film to watch, although it is incredibly graphic and quite intense, dipping into some deeply scary imagery in its closing moments.  Yet, even in its imperfections, it adheres to many of the experimental, non-linear, culturally provocative and revolutionary imagery that makes it such a fruitful national cinema to discuss.  The film makes a perfect addition to this month of films because it makes considerable use of women in major roles, all be it, quite problematic ones, and does a great job of considering the negative manner with which vanity and a lust for consumer goods intrude upon women's attempts to navigate and already unwelcoming society.  It is a film that makes sure viewers are aware of how mentally distraught the various characters are, drawing their problems from a variety of external forces as well as pent-up internalized issues.  The filmic space explodes and clashes with the various issues as they relate the the individual and the collective within the film, often in highly expressionistic manners, while at other times being definitively grotesque.  It is a film with a clear message, or call against, vanity and internalization of women's lack in regard to illogical male standards and does a masterful job of suggesting its generational transference, particularly when its issues are purposefully and problematically repressed.  If it were not an already absolutely convoluted plot the insistence Yong-Gyun Kim, the inclusion of the singular panoptic eye into the narrative manages to make its theoretical execution marvelous.

The film focuses on Sun-jae (Kim Hye-soo) a woman who has just left her husband after discovering him to be cheating on her while she was taking their daughter to school.  Frustrated and stunned, Sun-jae takes her and her daughter and moves into an apartment, hoping to make a new life, one that will have her find success opening an optical care center.  Yet, when she returns home to pick up a few more items she also sees a pair of red (pink, if we are to be honest) shoes that she found on a subway.  As she moves these shoes into her home, it becomes quite evident that they also bring a terrible past along with them, one that spirals Sun-jae into a state of mind filled with vanity and greed, finding it hard to navigate the world of caring for a daughter, opening a business and getting back into the dating world.  Sun-jae's daughter, and eventually a friend of Sun-jae's fall victim to the curse of the red shoes, which leads Sun-jae's daughter to act out against her mother and for her friend to become possessed by an unseen spirit while admiring a wedding gown.  Realizing the terrible problems that the shoes causes, Sun-jae attempts to discard of the shoes, only to have them return to her inexplicably, in some cases in the hands of her daughter, who spouts incoherent claims about a dead husband in the process.  The fact that she is incapable of ridding herself of the shoes, leads her and her boyfriend to attempt to find the origin of the cursed footwear, leading to a realization that the shoes were tied to a young woman whose own abuses led to her death and resulting quest for some degree of vengeance.  In the end, Sun-jae's inextricable attachment to the shoes mean that she must accept the death given to her at the hands of the vengeful ghost, which occurs in an intense and violent manner.  The narrative then closes in on Sun-jae's daughter as she stares into a mirror practicing her dance moves, yet her darkened eyes and pale visage, suggest her own attachment to the curse as well.

Despite being a narrative complex film, there are some theoretical moments that draw upon ideas of exploitation and objectification that justify the film receiving my praise.  Firstly, the deconstruction of consumerism and beauty myths as a problematic relationships is dealt with excellentlly, whether it be Sun-jae's own self-worth changing upon putting make-up on and appropriating Westernized beauty looks, or when her friend longs for a wedding-dress that is so skinny that it would prove unwearable to a much smaller person.  Their own desires to appease their negative body image issues result in their very real destruction, an undeniable commentary on body dysmorphia and its negative affects in can place on women.  Each woman, even the daughter, believe that by possessing the shoes they will somehow be able to comfortably navigate their respective spaces, even in the case of Sun-jae who simply wants to be admired by her father again, whose leaving she is far too young to truly conceptualize.  Mirrors also factor heavily into the film, whether it be with Sun-jae's constant obsession with her blind eye for a considerable portion of the narrative, or her own daughter at ballet class lingering on her body perhaps longer than necessary, a likely result of the young age at which beauty ideals are thrust upon children.  The eye, as a ever present figure also serves as a great metaphor within the film, in a panoptic, or all-seeing, manner the presence of the eye serves as a constant point of judgement for the women in the film, their looks and bodies always in question and constant judgement, even in their private spaces and internal thoughts.  It is not an irony lost that Sun-jae's seemingly admiring and progressive boyfriend paints the eye, because even if he thinks himself a standup guy he, nonetheless, engages in objectification and openly considers Sun-jae's addition of makeup and Western beauty norms a good thing.  It is a film brimming with beauty myth criticism and has a ton more to be read into upon later revisits.

Key Scene:  When Sun-jae's sanity finally splits, the visual metaphor is fantastic and disconcerting and made the narratively complex movie come together magically.

This is likely a rental for most people, I will personally keep a copy for myself, but can easily understand doing otherwise.

It Was Such A Gruesome Scene, I Could Not Watch: 13B (2009)

Leave it to a Bollywood film to create a horror genre offering that was almost as zany as the previously reviewed House, while not as experimental as Obayashi's seventies work. 13B: Fear Has A New Address, directed by Vikram K. Kumar certainly is unlike any horror movie I have seen to date.  However, from what I have come to understand, Bollywood filmmakers are infamous for borrowing heavily from the plots and themes of Hollywood films to drive their points home, and 13B is certainly no exception to this act.  It is quite easy to pick up the influences of Hitchcock specifically, as well as moments from famous horror movies, whether they be Poltergeist, Videodrome or some of the more contemporary hack and slash works, the images and acts mirror these films far to nicely to be mere coincidence.  To say that Kumar borrows heavily from these films is not a critique on my part by any means, hell, Tarantino has made a career out of it, yet the film does so in such a way that you are offered moments of cinematic familiarity, only to have them robbed when you realize that 13B is genuinely its own work, one with multiple elements of the horror genre engaged into a lengthy film, along with unusual inclusions of moments such as music videos and the required dance number that appears to show up at the end of every Bollywood work.  Furthermore, like many of the movies mentioned this month, 13B makes note of the problematic place technology plays within our society, particularly when it comes to the disconnection of relationships and this film takes some broad steps in showing how cataclysmic such lack of attachment can become in communication in times of emergency, particularly when such moments are so insane that any non-direct means of talking fail to express the problem.  13B is a fresh film, with a heavy zest of classic horror works that has made my desire to consume more Bollywood work all the greater.

13B focuses on middle class construction overseer Manohar (R. Madhavan) as he is moving into a new condominium along with many of his family members, a move that represents a huge boost in his class placement, but also a heavy burden on his finances.  Despite small omens such as the milk constantly curdling and being shocked by appliances, Manohar believes that his new life will be rich and rewarding and that eventually his somewhat detached family will come together happily, even if they are constantly glued to the television to watch "their serials."  After a creepy encounter with a man in the complex who owns a dog named Harry, Manohar notices that the newest television program his family is tuned into titled "Everyone Is Well," is beginning to reflect his life, often simultaneously, as he witnesses conversations occurring on the television, as they are also occurring in the room next to him.  He is dismissive at first, until the show predicts that his wife will have a miscarriage, something that leads Manohar on a quest to discover what is going on at his house and why it is being haunted by, of all things a television.  After discussions with an expert in paranormal studies, Manohar, along with the help of a police friend named Shiva (Murali Sharma) they begin to unfold a suicide and mistreatment of  a mentally challenged person which occurred at the location some thirty year earlier.  When it becomes clear that the actions occurring on the television show suggest that Manohar's family will be murdered, by Manohar himself, he plans to lock himself in a room to avoid such occurrences, yet even after this blocking of Manohar the show manages to alter its course ever so slightly to make a new threat for Manohar's family, one that could be said to come from out of nowhere, yet in a daring venture Manohar is able to save his family, allowing them to return to their happy, one that they are sure to praise the gods for earning.  In the closing scenes, Manohar has a conversation with one of the integral characters to the plot in which he suggests that if paranormal entities really wanted to interfere with human lives they would use cell phones, and not a measly television.

13 B is a Bollywood film through and through, yet its inherent commentary on television perhaps most closely relates to the previously mentioned Videodrome, in that it suggests a unhealthy nearly addictive attachment to the television screen.  Manohar's family refuses to even acknowledge a world in which they cannot watch their favorite television shows and while the younger members of the family are not necessarily focused on the television specifically they do indeed have their own problematic connections to the material world whether it be through cellphone use or a desire for a new vehicle.  The overarching commentary then becomes what role as a means for moral and emotive reactions a television should play, this is certainly the case in the scene in which Manohar witnesses the news from the doctor that his wife will survive the miscarriage.  The news is good in that he will keep his wife whom he loves dearly and we witness Manohar fall to his knees, weeping in front of the television set, an action that allows him to prepare for his real life encounter with his wife, in which he is noticeably more stoic.  Overall, the television program appears harmless to everyone until violent actions occur, particularly when the murdering via sledgehammer occurs, at which point Manohar's wife Priya (Neetu Chandra) begins questioning the relevance of the show, her moral compass says that the actions are reprehensible, even for a fictional program, of course she does not realize the reality occurring off screen.  This suggests then that to some degree art must question its validity once it delves into realms of gore and violence, a theme pertinent in not only this film, but more than one of the movies I have reviewed this month.

Key Scene:  The moment when Manohar realizes that his apartment is a threshold for some sort of paranormal presence is well executed and suspense laden.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, but am not entirely sure on its rewatchability.  The film is luckily available on Netflix Watch Instantly, although I will warn you that some of the subtitling is quite awful.

Can The Internet Dial You Up?: Pulse (2001)

Known as Kairo to Japanese audiences, Pulse is the inspiration for the American remake about a film in which a ghost spreads through technological devices, in a way very much matching a virus.  While the American version in all likelihood incorporates lots of high-end shock values and gore (admitedly I have never seen it so I can not say with certainty, it is purely speculation), the Japanese original predicates itself on a very drawn-out dreary and desolate vision of horror.  While this focus on isolation can be off-putting and even boring to many viewers, I found the film to be profound and gorgeous in its  lackluster appearances.   A palette of dull greens and greys, as well as a heavy use of jet black allow for a film to capture both isolation in a cinematic sense, as well as the computer inspired world from which it draws its inspiration.  I would gladly compare the cinematic stylings of this film to The Matrix, although thematically they are two starkly different films.  Pulse is firmly a horror film, one that has ghosts, death and a discernible eeriness that is rarely matched in contemporary genre works.  I know that J-Horror has come to be associated most closely with The Ring and The Grudge, but I am certain that a strong case could be made for this being the biggest signifier of what Japan had to offer with a new era of filmmaking in the late 90's and early 2000's.  They were keen to comment on the affects and effects of technology on a post-modern society and were especially willing to make note of the separation anxiety which ensued from a harsh severing with tradition.  An argument could easily be made for this film, as well as the others perviously mentioned existing in a specifically Japanese context, which would help to explain exactly why the works have not excelled as well when remade in America, even with literal shot for shot transfers.  It reflects anxieties, unique to Japanese society, particularly those living within Tokyo and as such one must watch this definitively unconventional horror film with this notion stuck in the the back of their mind.

Pulse exists as two seemingly divergent story lines, one involving a young woman named Kudo Michi (Kumiko Aso) who works at a plant shop along with a handful of other friends, most notably a young man named Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi).  It is clear that Michi has feelings for Taguchi, something that is problematized when Taguchi shows up to work with a computer disc that contains an unusual video of ghosts.  The video on the disc seems to cause Taguchi to commit suicide, the moments prior caught in their own video moment, depicting a pale wraith-like Taguchi simply staring into a computer monitor.  As their interactions continue, it becomes apparent that the video is causing all those who view it to become profusely depressed to the result of suicide, something Michi is forced to witness, causing her greater despair as she is forced through Tokyo as the suicidal virus spreads.  The second storyline involves a computer novice named Ryosuke (Haruhiko Kato) as he comes into contact with the virus accidentally and seeks help after he realizes the video continues to play even after he unplugs his computer.  He ends up recruiting the help of a computer science student named Harue (Koyuki) who her self becomes entangled in the problematics of the virus.  After an interaction with a graduate student in computer sciences, Ryosuke is informed that the apparitions he is witnessing do, in fact, exist in the real real, although they still contain an ethereal nature about them.  The ghosts apparently have a sole purpose of driving those who see them into a suicidal fit, as to join them in their disparaging loneliness.  After separate interactions with the desolation of the world around them, Ryosuke and Harue eventually encounter one another making it their quest to outrun the isolation and the virus, eventually making it to a freight ship that is to leave to Latin America, one of the few places with living human contact believed still to exist.  Tragically, despair has overwhelmed Ryosuke and he vanishes into ash in the films closing scenes.

This film is fully about notions of isolation and despair, suggesting heavily that the reason for such disconnections can be found to some degree in contemporary society's refusal to detach itself from technology.  However, as Colette Balmain argues quite eloquently in her article for Japanesestudies.org, the loneliness existing within this film, as well as works like The Ring and Suicide Club express a unique despair to Japan, one that is influenced heavily by cultural attachments to architecture, as well as environment and memory.  While I do not intend to reiterate what she has already said, as it is a great read and well worth checking out in the attachment, I instead want to draw upon a few other moments where this isolation occurs within the film.  First off, the computer program created by the graduate student in the film is essentially a glorified star movement screensaver in which a group of dots move about, without colliding.  The dots cannot cross, because to do so would mean their destruction, however, the farther they separate the strong the force to pull them together becomes.  In this sense, it represents the technological divide faced by the characters in the film, in essence they use technology to become "closer" only to realize that physical interactions inevitably result in loss and the pain of such moments will cause inevitable grief and untimely death.  This metaphor is furthered when a bug in the program causes the creation of phantom dots that follow around the original dots, suggesting a spectral essence.  Ultimately, the program and the film suggest a ethereal presence that emerges as a result of technology, very Buddhist in its creation, not in its interactions.  This notion is quite intriguing in that it raises questions of mind, body and how it is problematized with a non-physical presence, or what we have come to call our online personas.  While much of the technology in Pulse has become quite outdated the message is more pertinent than before, because the fears posited in the film have only grown exponentially.

Key Scene:  There is one capturing of a ghost on a computer screen as it moves in and out of nothingness that is particularly intense.

Buy this movie if you even remotely like horror films, Japanese films or works of cinema that comment on technology in contemporary society, it will fill a cinematic void in you that you were probably not aware existed.  It is relatively cheap on Amazon and free to watch instantly to Prime members.

Only A Witch Cat Can Close A Door: House (1977)

A film that is constantly referenced on my blog, Nobuhiko Obayashi's House is hands down one of the most insane and logic defying films to ever come about, and as one of the guys on Criterion Cast put it, House is one of those films that Criterion releases in which you have no idea you wanted to see, but love watching it once it becomes available.  A film that is wholly experimental, staunchly within the horror genre and yet still not quite capable of categorization, Obayashi's work exist as an example of what is possible in cinema when one truly drops all notions of traditional filmmaking and instead focuses on making a work unique, as well as a celebration of their past work, in the case of Obayashi work on commercials, something that Japanese autuers deemed lowly.  Perhaps no movie deserves to be called trippy more so than House, as it's technicolor backdrops, schlocky after effects and unbridled use of sexuality as a means to advance plot all suggest it as having a place right next to the classics of b movie horror, yet again though, this placement manages to overlook so much of what is being created both in terms of genre hybridity and the way in which cinema is viewed and consumed.  A blatant, and self-proclaimed answer to Steven Spielberg's Jaws, House manages to capture the exact same sort of unconventional zeal and enthusiasm of the classic American horror film, in that we can clearly see that the film is not made by a master filmmaker like Ozu or Kurosawa, but by somebody who is still finding their footing as a director, however, this footing is clearly to be grounded in the absurdist tradition, far more indicative of the work of Seijun Suzuki, than a Mikio Naruse.  I often place House on as many top ten lists as I can because quite frankly it is one of the few films I could countlessly revisit, as well as something that I feel required to share with the rest of the world.

House certainly has a plot, figuring out exactly where it comes and goes is admittedly a bit troublesome.  Suffice to say the film's main protagonist is a young woman nicknamed Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) who is still adapting to the recent announcement by her father that he will be remarrying after the death of his wife, and Gorgeous's mother over eight years earlier.  Frustrated, Gorgeous asks her Aunt (Yoko Minamida) if she can stay at her mother's former home for the summer...along with her group of friends from high school, which include an eponymous group of women like Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo), Mac (Mieko Sato) and Melody (Eriko Tanaka).  Sending a cat named Blanche as an aid to fetch Gorgeous and the other girls, Aunt is ecstatic to have them stay.  Informing their school teacher that they are headed there the girls pack and travel to the house, only to discover that it is in the remote portion of a rural village and has become quite dilapidated.   Aunt, a much older woman now, explains that she cannot move as well any more and that is why the house is not only in such ruin, but also seems to take on a life of its own.  However, it become evident quite quickly that the house is possessed by a demonic spirit of sorts, one that begins attacking the various girls, often in ways that reflect their personalities, Mac is killed via food, while Melody is killed while at a piano.  All of this crashes together in a bloody climax that defies explanation and is certainly not benefitted by spoiling, suffice to say you will come out of the ending probably knowing a little less than you did going in, but in this situation it may well be for the better.

House is a horror film, one could comfortably place it in that genre with little or no confusion.  Yet when it comes down to explaining why this film is creepy, many a critics find themselves explaining that it is far more comedic than scary, and after screening this to my film club during my undergraduate it would seem to be the case with the amount of laughter that occurred throughout.  Despite this the movie does have a very tense and creepy quality about it, in its lack of explanation.  Every scene that exists within the film, even before it becomes a horror narrative, suggests no sort of linear composition and has the viewer perked up in anticipation and at some points dread of what will occur next, and in my mind that is a major necessity in a horror film.  This notion that it is scary is furthered when on realizes that Obayashi recruited the aid of his daughter, who at the time was ten, to help create some of the scenes in the script, particularly the one that occurs in front of a vanity mirror.  In an interview regarding its relationship with Jaws, Obayashi explained that things like bear and giant ant attacks were horrors created by the rational adult mind and he wanted something far more surreal and imaginative with his work and he felt his daughters freed mind could provide such occurrences.  I find this fascinating and it certainly helps to elucidate why the horror seems creepy, without altogether being grotesque or unbearable.  It is a horror movie of a different conception and different execution and one that its scary in its unpredictability.

Key Scene:  Anything involving the piano is magical.

Buy this move...here's a a link.

Hit, Kick, Claw, Unconscious, Sound, Skin, Burn, Worm, Guts, Needle: The Devil's Experiment (1985)

WARNING:  This blog post may contain images and descriptions that some individuals may find offensive or disturbing.  I went with the least gruesome pictures I could find, but even then...

I knew going into my study of horror cinema for this month that some of the films chosen would take me into some dark and less than appealing areas of horror genre films, particularly that of gore cinema.  While I only bought a copy of The Devil's Experiment with the express intention of reselling it, however, since it was in my possession I decided to make it a selection for this month of films.  Also known as Guinea Pig 1, The Devil's Experiment exists as part of a larger series of gore films created in Japan during the mid 80's to the early 90's up until a pre-Tiger Blood Charlie Sheen discovered a copy of one of the films and made it a crusade of his to find the creators and arrest them for what he believed to be real footage.  To describe The Devil's Experiment as grotesquely unwatchable is to undermine the extremely clear lack of reality that extends through the forty minute film.  At no point did I pick up a moment where I felt something was actually occurring, more so no snuff film, not that I have seen one, has that nice of cinematography.  The Devil's Experiment is a film of artistic expression, all be it, one very dark, twisted and disturbed vision.   Given its unavailability for quite some time, the film now exists more as a legend that is to be discovered hiding away on the back shelf of a movie or rental store, one that in my opinion is certifiably underwhelming.  Sure the film is a bit sickening and damn near unwatchable, but it has not managed to keep the factor of the sheer grotesque as a film like Cannibal Holocaust has, nor does it have the implicit and keen political commentary of Pasolini's disturbing, yet magnificent work Salo.  In essence, The Devil's Experiment exists for a certain kind of film viewer, one who wants their palette saturated with confrontational, grating images of gore and could care very little for plot or social approval, yet one might be able to glean some sort of social criticism out of this gore classic.

The Devil's Experiment is one of the rare films whose narrative truly extends beyond the filmic narrative, which is good because there is not really a plot and at only forty minutes it makes describing it in a paragraph a bit difficult.  Suffice to say the film, like many a found footage works, suggests that the material was mailed to an unwilling recipient who watched the work only to immediately call the police in total shock and disgust.  The film provides no names, dates or production info suggesting it to be some sort of home video filled with sadomasochistic acts.  These acts include everything from striking a young woman with hands and legs to the boiling of hot oil on her skin.  The acts do not always include torture of the physical or external sense as some scenes involve spinning the woman around and pouring whiskey down her throat until she is sick, or playing screeching noises in her ears until her sanity breaks.  Between scenes the woman is shown dangling from a net, suggesting a nearly inhuman quality about her, helping, but not justifying, to explain the men's ability to degrader her.  The film closes with a gruesome needle through the eye moment, reminiscent, but not nearly as cinematic as the infamous scene from Un Chien Andalou.  The aftermath of this film was intense, while it was allegedly a "found footage" piece the filmmaker and actors were forced onto a tribunal in which they were to prove that each scene was indeed created with cinematic illusion and that nobody was harmed. Furthermore, the Guinea Pig series received its ultimate condemnation in Japan when it was discovered that a prolific serial killer kept the movies in a personal collection, even going so far as to display one of the series in front of the rest of his disturbing collection.  Again, The Devil's Experiment exits more as a myth to be seen, as opposed to a classic to be enjoyed.

What then can be said about something like The Devil's Experiment.  In my opinion when one approaches a film of such a graphic nature and of political problematics, it is necessary to ask a simple question:  Does this film do anything to help advance or rethink cinema?  I am hesitant to say yes, but upon reflection I think an argument could certainly be made in its favor.  I think The Devil's Experiment to at least a minimal degree asks its viewers to consider their role in film viewing and to what degree violence should be condoned.  In the guise of scientific experimentation one can distance themselves from the acts performed and make an argument that it is purely a psychological reflection.  This is not true, because it is indeed the destruction of a human body, which is never acceptable, even in the name of science.  If this were indeed occurring to an individual we as a society would be up in arms and demanding the death penalty to all those involved.  If it is a reflection on psychology it is clearly on human's desire to see the taboo and grotesque, which can be tied to the death drive and some other Freudian rhetoric in which I am not well versed.  Of course the film too plays with notions of the gaze in cinema, something I am realizing is quite prominent in the horror genre, particularly since the film closes with the gouging of an eye, suggesting that the viewer should be threatened by a loss of vision and whatever form of unconscious pleasure they may have derived from the film.  Of course as a feminist I can only condemn this film because it is under no means acceptable on any level.

Key Scene:  Ummm....the end I guess if I absolutely had to pick a part, although if it is based solely on most disturbing scene I would say the Worm sequence.

So buying this film is not necessary, however, should you see a super cheap copy somewhere like I did, I would suggest purchasing it because it is worth a bit as it is and will likely only increase in price as the years pass, because from what I understand this film is doomed to never be released on any format again.