House

In the realm of WTF there are some movies that mess with your mind and make you ask what the hell that was. Movies like Eraserhead, Tetsuo the Bullet Man and The Holy Mountain are brought up as examples of this. But none of them hold a candle to the serious mind screw that is "House" or "Hausu" depending on your preference.

A bunch of schoolgirls head to a creepy house in the countryside owned by an aunt of one of the girls. Each one is named after a skill, ability or character trait. Gorgeous is pretty, Kung Fu likes to fight and Mac likes to eat. And once they get there things get weird.

To try to even describe this movie is a challenge. Things happen. Really weird things happen. It's got a charming 70's vibe to it. The effects, although amateurish by today's standards, are well done for the era. And while the actors do a decent job, it's full of theater acting. The difference is that their actions tend to be a little over the top and not natural. This is of course a hallmark of Japanese cinema where a more stylized take is preferred over something more natural that we expect over here. That's not a bad thing though as it lends an air of other worldliness to what would otherwise be a rather tepid story.

In short, it works. If you're a fan of the bizarre you really ought to take a look at this.

There is a serious erotic component to this that no one seems to want to touch in the user reviews, and most of the actresses were 16 at the time. It's bizarre and entertaining, using lots of war metaphors with themes of innocence and teenage trauma.

Hausu is basically the most bizarre Haunted House movie I've ever seen. The story follows a group of girlfriends who head to the country for vacation. They go to one of the girl's Aunt's house to spend their time. But beknownst to all of them the Aunt isn't really who she says she is. And there's a cat named Snowflake that obviously has some issues. Girls begin experiencing the supernatural and things don't seem to be slowing up. Reading back what I just wrote kinda makes the movie seem not so interesting. Seems like just another haunted house flick. But if you pop in this flick, almost immediately you will realize you've never seen a film like this. Filmed in a lively, colorful way mixed with a fantastic soundtrack, the flick exceeds on all levels of production. Combine the production values with a children's movie feel, then combine that with some blood, violence and nudity, you get a very different hybrid genre of a flick. Hausu is a flick that all fans of unique horror or cinema for that matter should check out.

A girl has just gotten a new stepmother, which greatly displeases her. So she decides to take her six one-character-trait friends and go visit her aunt on the countryside. In her aunt's house strange things start to happen.

House, or Hausu if you prefer, is certainly something you'll remember for the rest of your days. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi intentionally wanted to make something with a very low budget, blatantly simplistic characters and events so bizarre and out of the left field that they would need no justification. And this honest commitment to weirdness is what makes the movie so enjoyable. Pretty much from the get-go you're being told that you're not supposed to take this too seriously, not supposed to think too much about it.

And when you allow yourself to relax, lean back into your cushions and just take it in, it's a lot of fun. Does it make any sense? No, but it's not supposed to. However, it is a bit hard to follow, which can be a problem even with a film such as this. The seven girls are hard to tell apart, especially when they all dress and act pretty similarly. There are some outliers, but even still the character roster could have used a trim.

Still, it's hard to criticize a film whose entire purpose is to step outside the norms and the expectations. If you're looking for an experience and don't mind horror tropes being made fun of, this might be your film.

Oh my goodness, what at trippy, crazy, cheesy little movie this is. I don't think it has a single scene in it which doesn't have some type of campy, surreal special effect. Early on it seems like part Wes Anderson, part after-school special, part J-pop, part … I don't know, just 'out there', and certainly unique. It gets weirder and weirder as it goes. If you love the bizarre and the downright silly, movies which don't take themselves too seriously and are out to throw wild images at you, you'll probably love this film. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi has a real flair, and he's not out to make things look super-realistic, he's out to entertain. If you're looking for a ghost story, real drama, or horror, well, this isn't it. You never feel real tension, even as the cute little girls are attacked by mattresses, devoured by a piano, etc etc. For me I suppose I fell more in the latter camp, wishing the film had some balance in creating a film about the supernatural, but you can easily see why it has a bit of a cult attraction to it, and your mileage may vary.