Three Films Make A Post: He always takes one

The Collector (2009): When I initially watched Michael Dunstan’s film, I judged it to be deeply indebted to Saw and the piss-coloured aesthetics of that school of filmmaking. Today, I rather see it as a variation on Home Alone where Kevin has grown up, is breaking into peoples’ houses and turns them into trapped murder holes, which makes me a lot happier.

It’s still more a decent film than a great one, mind you, lacking in something that makes it truly special, or that’s as insane as its killer’s chosen method. That would come in the sequel, fortunately.

Sana aka Everybody’s Song (2023): Takashi Shimizu, decades away from his J-horror heights, does still regularly churn out horror movies of highly variable quality. Sana has some delightful moments of dread and terror and a complicated twisty backstory to its haunting that actual earns those twists; it also goes on a little too long, and spends a bit too much time on also being an ad – there’s even a song with lyrics subbed on screen, so you can karaoke to it, as well – for the boy (well, men) band Generations. These guys aren’t bad actors for male idols, and the film isn’t pulling its punches too badly in their treatment in the plot. Still, I can’t help but think that a film concerning a fictional pop group could have gone into rather more interesting places with them as characters.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024): The newest entry into Legendary’s kaijuverse is about as silly as giant monster movies from the USA will get, which is to say, pretty damn silly indeed, and if you’re looking for even the shallowest puddle of depth, you’ll be rather disappointed in it. If you’re willing to accept that this thing is just going to revel in a large number of giant monster fights - all realized in the fakest most colourful digital art Hollywood money can buy -, grin at you, make up bizarre lore and waste Rebecca Hall on a role even a muppet could play, you may very well have a very good time after all.

For one thing is clear: Adam Wingard is doing his damndest to entertain his audience here, to never bore, to ignore the human drama nobody cares about (that’s what that Apple TV show about bigamy is for), and to just turn out a fun piece of popcorn cinema, the sort of thing that’s pure sensation, nothing else.

I’m perfectly fine with that approach to filmmaking and thus felt myself perfectly entertained by the film; I rather enjoy the contrast between this and what Toho does with Godzilla on his home turf, as well.

Some Thoughts About Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)

Original title: 呪怨

A recent re-watch of what is still one of my favourite films among the J-horror wave of the time reminded me of what a fascinating film Takashi Shimizu’s cinematic version of his DTV movies is. On the surface, this is a much inferior film to that other great classic of its time, Ringu, having to work with much lower production values, as well as an inferior cast, and binding itself to a highly episodic structure.

I believe it is exactly the episodic structure, or rather, how Shimizu creates the structure what keeps this still as such an effective piece of horror filmmaking. Its greatest strength lies in how much the structure of the film mirrors the structure of the curse, a viral infection of supernatural anger that moves outward from a time and place in ways that feel frightening because of their irrationality and by how little the people suffering from the supernatural are actually connected to it. Entering the wrong place, being related to another victim, is enough – the idea of punishing the guilty through the supernatural just never applies here; even warnings to the curious are fairer than that. One can, and I sometimes like to, see a nice parallel to the at best indifferent cosmos of Cosmic Horror here, though arrived at from a direction based in Japanese folklore and Buddhist and Shinto concepts of spirits, and certainly carrying a less nihilist meaning, at least culturally speaking.

The temporally disjointed structure strengthens this feeling of the Grudge as something unfair, cruel and anti-rational, as if the destructive supernatural here worked not just forward in time and outward in space, but also backwards and sideways, destroying causality along with the sense of security.

Three Films Make A Post: Five lives... Ten years... And a Million Tons of Thundering Suspense!

Child’s Play (1988): Of all the supernatural slasher franchises, I’ve always been particularly fond of the Child’s Play films, even once they discovered self-referantialism for themselves. Tom Holland’s first one primarily convinces through its unassuming qualities: there aren’t terribly many genre films of this era that seem to care so little for keeping the body count up for its own sake and instead go for more classic thriller and suspense methods in their goal of getting to the audience. Okay, Alex Vincent is as horrible as child actors go, but if that’s your film’s biggest problem, you are doing rather well.

Beyond Dream’s Door (1989): One might call Jay Woelfel’s film a more dream-like sibling of the Nightmare on Elm Street series whose outré qualities are decidedly enhanced by the awkwardness of some of the acting and the low budget of the production. It’s certainly coming from a related dream demon spirit to Craven’s film and what followed, though it goes much farther in the way dream and reality mix, adds a bit of Cosmicism to the mix and delights me to no end, even though its special effects are dubious, and its gore is so squishy as to be absurd. Absolutely a film that should deserve a longer piece and only does not get it from me because it is really better seen than talked about.

(Flight) 7500 (2014): The last decade or so of director Takashi Shimizu’s career has been a qualitative rollercoaster bound to confuse even the more patient viewer. This disaster/horror movie outing with the most obvious twist ending in the world (yes, it’s exactly the one you think it is right now, so spoilers, sweeties) is Shimizu at his lowest point, with the appearance of one of the man’s beloved stuffed rabbit toys as up as the high points of this one go. Otherwise there’s only wasted acting talent rather good at not showing any (hello, Amy Smart, Scout Taylor-Compton, Leslie Bibb, Ryan Kwanten et al), a script by Craig Rosenberg that’s as clichéd, badly paced and emotionally flat as they come, and direction so bland and characterless I’m not completely sure Shimizu hasn’t been replaced by DIRECT-O-BOT-1000 for this one.

In short: The Shock Labyrinth 3D (2009)

A group of former childhood friends is reunited when a long lost friend reappears banging on one of their doors. Yuki, as the returnees name is, has been missing since something terrible none of the former friends can or will remember happened to the children at some place they can't remember either, leading to consequences which, yup, nobody remembers. I smell traumatic flashbacks in their future.

After some back and forth, Yuki manages to fall down some stairs. Her former friends bring her to a hospital, but the place is empty. Soon enough it transforms into that place everyone had wanted to forget: a carnival ride known as "The Shock Labyrinth". Mildly frightening things will happen, and the friends will have to face their obligatory frightening past.

One of the sadder moments in the life of every cult movie fan is when he has to realize his personal hero directors are only human too, and therefore able to produce astonishing failures. Case in point is this movie by (still very much beloved) Takashi Shimizu. I was well able to overlook the crapness of his Hollywood films, because a talented director from any part of Asia coming to the US and not making terrible movies just isn't done. But The Shock Labyrinth 3D was made in Japan, for the Japanese market yet it still is a total catastrophe.

Gone is everything I loved about Shimizu's movies - his ability to use simple visual means to produce a mood of disquiet, doom and a Lovecraftian feeling of the universe, his talent to make do with the simplest of character sketches and still have an audience feel bad for what happens to these non-persons, as well as his often truly frightening imagination when it comes to set design, sound design and consciously confusing plotting. All this is replaced by scenes of non-entities plodding through dark corridors, the least needed 3D-effects ever to touch a screen, a 30 minute plot blown up to 85 minutes through judicious use of filler (that is, more running and plodding around in the dark), stupid death scenes (honestly, "dead woman falls on persons from above and breaks their necks" just doesn't work, and definitely does not get better through repetition), and a dead woman crawling out of a flying rabbit backpack while digital water drops fall from the sky.

Shock Labyrinth would be a less painful experience if there was anything to recommend it, but even the film's perfectly fine basic idea of a ghost taking vengeance for past, half-imagined crimes (that actually were a hardly creditable series of accidents) that might go somewhere if executed with subtlety or energy, is ruined through the ham-fistedness and the sheer dragginess of the execution. It's really a bit embarrassing coming from a man like Shimizu.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese movies,horror,in short,takashi shimizu

The Great Horror Family (2004)

Original title: Kaiki Daikazoku

The rather eccentric Imawano family movies into a new suburban home. While the family's dad, being an enthusiast of the paranormal, is rather excited about the fact that something's supposed to be not quite right with the new house, the rest of his family is a bit blasé about it all. And no wonder: though Dad has no talent at actually seeing the things he's so excited about under any circumstances, the rest of the family has inherited the psychic abilities of a long line of female priests and mediums.

While the family is still moving in, Grandpa (Shunji Fujimura) has some frightening experience with the central hub for all of the house's mystery, The Room That Will Not Open, and dies. Obviously, being dead and all, he's now not the best candidate for the family's spiritual protection anymore, so Gramps's ghost moves into the Room and charges his hapless grandson Kiyoshi (Issei Takahashi) with the job. The dead old man is convinced that something important and terrible will happen soon.

In fact, Kiyoshi has his hands full with a series of ghostly appearances, aliens, yokai and other weird occurrences that happen in and around the house in a matter of minutes. Cursed gothic lolitas, men in black, whacky priests and a female ghost (Kyoko Toyama) with a crush on the young man will also make an appearance. Kiyoshi's rather inconcrete mission isn't made any easier by the utter weirdness that is the natural state of the rest of the family (Tomiko Ishii, Shigeru Muroi, Asuka Shibuya). And those are just the little daily troubles the young man will have to survive before he has to cope with the true nature of what is hidden inside The Room That Will Not Open.

The 13-episode TV show The Great Horror Family is what happens when a bunch of directors and writers - among them Takashi Shimizu and Yudai Yamaguchi - with love for and experience in all things horrific decide (well, or are hired) to make a horror comedy.

The early episodes concern mostly relatively traditional Japanese ghosties and ghoulies who all go about their usual business until their problems are solved through practical absurdity. The first episode, for example, sees the beleaguered Kiyoshi turn into a nightly ghost psychiatrist babbling away with the sort of kitchen psychology that could only convince a ghost of anything and inadvertently winning a fan for life (death?) in a female ghost named Asami. Through this, the audience learns early on that ghost are just people, too, only very dead and rather single-minded ones.

The further the show goes along, the more its emphasis wanders from funny interpretations of the more traditional ghosts to the sort of total absurdity and weirdness one expects of Japanese comedy. The show turns to situations that would be outright frightening or disturbing if they weren't played with a wink followed by a deadpan look.

I already liked the beginning of the show quite a bit (it's funny, you know), but the more absurd episodes tend to be even more entertaining. Honestly, what's not to like about a Yakuza movie parody in which Kiyoshi runs away from home and starts to work for a dead Yakuza bartender called Memento Mori, who offers living guests the opportunity to spend time with some charming living corpses, until the man's business is destroyed by zombie hit men? Or the episode in which a ghostly builder decides to renovate the family's home, and the Imawanos find themselves trapped in the bizarre, non-Euclidean labyrinth it turns into? The comedy format acts as a way for the makers of the show to be as playful as possible, and watching these guys being playful is a lot like listening to a group of very good improvising musician on a good evening.

While the show's visuals are solid, yet very TV-looking and therefore are bit bland at times, the excellent cast is what carries the show besides the humour. Everyone's not just cast exceedingly well, but game for everything, willing and able to switch from an ironic emulation of utter dramatic earnestness to bizarre grimacing at a moment's notice.

Even though not every episode's plot is something to write home about, the wild, random asides so typical of what I've learned to identify as Japanese humour make every single one of them worth watching. In this context, I'm even willing to approve of the slight sappiness that comes with the J-Drama territory.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese tv,comedy,horror,reviews,takashi shimizu,yudai yamaguchi,asuka shibuya,issei takahashi,kyoko toyama

Unholy Women (2006)

Unholy Women is a nice little horror anthology movie consisting of three stories by different directors in wildly varying style and tone, connected through that hoary old chestnut, the Ebil Woe-man. I wouldn't be much surprised if the movie had something to do with one of the many Japanese supernatural TV shows we in the West usually don't get to see. Two of its directors did at least some work in that direction.

TV shows and misogynist undertones aside, the film is well worth watching, if one isn't completely averse to Japanese horror.

It starts out with Rattle by Keita Amemiya, who is probably better known as the director of a few Kamen Rider films. It's the story of a young woman's terrible night. She is going to marry her boyfriend soon - after the divorce from his present wife is through, that is. Until then, she'll just have to survive the attention of a weird, knife-wielding woman dressed in red. At first, said woman seems to be her future husband's future ex-wife, then, after some more obvious supernatural occurrences have taken place, her future husband's future ex-wife's ghost, later one of those passerby ghosts who just happen to pounce on random people. Our heroine's night of screaming and running around finally leads her to the truth of the matter, in one of the more non-sensical and just plain silly twist endings of my movie watching career (with !bonus time travel without a cause). Well, nobody would have expected that explanation.

It is quite a shame about the ending - up to a point, Rattle is an unoriginal but solid genre piece, in the beginning nicely paced, with a few moments of rather clever sound design and an equally clever use of colour, held back from being something more by the terrible scenery chewing performance of the mad ghost woman's actress and the complete lack of motivation for her actions. The latter often works out nicely in Asian horror, but feels mostly incoherent here.

Fortunately, Rattle is the worst of the three stories.

The second one, Steel, tells of a young, painfully shy mechanic. One day (and very suddenly at that) his boss talks him into going out with his sister. Having never met the woman outside of a photograph (which turns out to leave out some important details), our hero is rather surprised when he meets the girl. She is wearing a brownish sack over her whole upper body, with no face or arms or much of her body above her mini-skirt visible. Even stranger is the way his boss is acting - he doesn't seem to think his sister's interesting fashion sense in the least strange or noteworthy; and hero boy is, of course, much too shy to just ask.

But, if you put two young people together, they are bound to fall in love or at least in lust, sack or no sack. After some abortive attempts at sex, which are made slightly problematic by her love of the old ultra-violence, the things she hides under her sack, and his tendency to either run away from her or try to kill her, the two outsiders slowly learn to love and trust each other...No, wait, it actually ends in a sack-themed variation on the vagina dentata. But it is still a happy ending.

Steel is a story that is bound to anger or irritate some viewers. It would be difficult not to find the story a little distasteful and the vagina dentata/woman in a sack business at least problematic, but I was won over very fast by director Takuji Suzuki's dry tone in the presentation of the utterly weird and wacky. The whole thing has some wonderfully funny moments derived from the kind of very Japanese humor that just takes something extremely weird and treats it with shrugging matter of factness, very much like our hero's boss.

In The Inheritance, the third and final episode, a freshly divorced woman and her young son return to her family home in the country. Her mother is still alive, but has not been in the most stable state of mind ever since her young son one night suddenly disappeared. Soon the grandmother isn't the only one in the house acting weird anymore. Something that she discover's in the old shed in the yard seems to break something inside the boy's mother and she's starting to act as erratically as her own mother. Then there's also the ghost of the boy's uncle and his connection to the shed for the child to cope with.

This last episode was directed by Keisuke Toyoshima, and "supervised" (whatever that may mean) by house-favourite Takashi Shimizu. The plot doesn't have a lot of surprises in store, but Toyoshima shows a very fine sense for mood and is able to present the kind of small gestures that are much more effective for me than things like spring-loaded cats. I was also quite taken by the unflinching way the film looks at child abuse - not so detailed as to be sensationalist, but with a well developed sense for the dreadfulness of the whole thing, the kind of dreadfulness that's a lot more difficult to take than ghosts.

So, even if the first story ends in a most irritating way, the other two episodes make Unholy Women well worth watching, unless you are one those people who just can't take looking at Asian people. You know, the kind of person all those American remakes of Asian films are made for (see also: things which are worse than death).

 

Technorati-Tags: reviews,horror,japanese movies,takashi shimizu,keisuke toyoshima,keita amemiya,takuji suzuki