Marebito

A strange film by Grudge writer/director Takashi Shimizu.

Shinya Tsukamoto (Ichi the Killer) is consumed with finding out the source of terror that caused a man to stab himself in the eye. He wants to experience the same terror - terror so horrible that it would cause you to want to kill yourself.

He goes underground looking for the beings that inhabit the tunnels under Tokyo and finds a naked girl, who he brings home to live with him. The girls is more animal than human and he kills to provide her blood rather than give her his own blood, which she wants.

It is not certain throughout whether he is going mad or finding what he is searching for. He even tries to escape, but resumes the search until he finally succumbs to the terror.

Despite the shaky camera work, which some like, but which distracts me, it was a fascinating look at terror and certainly a film that contains much more than available at first glance. A blend of mysticism and horror, it is a worthy view for fans of Japanese horror.

This sounded very interesting to me in an abstract/visual experiment kind of way when I read about it. Man takes a movie camera to the subway of Tokyo in search of unspeakable horrors and comes up with some to take back to his apartment. I love movies that take a peripatetic approach, that take us on walkabouts through weird/elaborate architecture, from The Shining to Last Year at Marienbad, and I hoped this would be one of the greats.

I like these films to be shot in DV, lights are harsh and cold and space attains an immediacy that appeals to me. If I was disappointed in this then it's not because it meanders and is short on plot but rather because the lovely visual experiment is used by Shimizu to tell a story of almost EC Comics simplicity, madness and damnation. The protagonist sees news footage of a man stabbing his eye in the Tokyo subway. The epiphany to go looking in the subway for that ultimate terror gleaming in the victim's eyes moments before his death comes seemingly after a quick mashup of superimposed images of video screens, white noise, and reaction shots of the character looking dazed - a visual slapdash chaos that seems like the director's way of saying "something clicked in his mind" and nothing more.

I like that Shimizu simply took a camera to the streets of Tokyo to make Marebito, we really don't see enough films of that kind by people who know how to make them, and I wish he would've used Hollow Earth as a springboard of ideas instead of making direct allusions to it. I was fascinated by the subject in my teens, as with other mystical theories I'm still shocked that there are people who take it at face value, as something more than interesting myth (Shimizu fortunately is not one of them), yet the discussion in the subway tunnel where a bunch of arcane references to the subject are bandied up serves nothing. I'm still glad that I saw it though, made me want to see some more Shinya Tsukamoto.

In the end, Marebito is about a man's struggle with his own madness, but it's a bit slapdash about telling us about it.

I honestly cannot say I liked this movie. I appreciate what it is, which is a genuinely creepy movie shot in 8 days on consumer-grade digital video by one of the masters of Japanese horror. However, what I cannot appreciate is the disregard for character development or practical story-telling.

Masuoka is obsessed with video. He's got his own apartment under surveillance (from within, oddly enough), he carries a small camcorder everywhere he goes, and he seems to be plugged into random cameras throughout the city. And what he's looking for in all of this video is the ultimate in fear. One day, walking in the subways, he encounters a bizarre suicide. The victim sees something that only he can which, apparently leads him to stab himself in the eye. Obsessed with finding out what this man saw, Masuoka goes underground. Literally. Underneath the city he finds a bizarre netherworld. And one naked girl chained to a wall. Who may or may not be his daughter.

Sounds weird, hunh? Well, it sure is. The use of digital video, cut with even grainier digital video makes for a creepy look, and the sound work is a constant video hum which increases the paranoia and overall strange feeling. But that's really all the movie is. Just a really creepy exercise that never builds into something coherent. Characters pass through with seemingly no rhyme or reason, but they sure are creepy. Many big ideas are pitched (like another dimension of freaky demons leaking over into ours. Ouch!), but they're never taken anywhere.

If you're a fan of Shimizu's work, you'll notice his fingerprints all over this. However, this is a departure in many ways. It is not built around the "boo" factor which pervades most of this other work. It is a much dreamier, atmospheric film than his others. It doesn't seem as concerned with scaring as it is with just creeping the hell out of people. Which it does. What is missing is who this guy is. What he's all about, why he's videotaping everything. And maybe a coherent story.

But, holy crap, a movie shot in 8 days! Kudos.

I highly suggest seeing this film if you are a fan of Shimizu's works. Apparently it was filmed before Ju-On, in only eight days. This shows what a master filmmaker can do in such a short time. This movie will make you feel very uncomfortable and extremely disturbed. It is about a camera man who wants nothing more than to feel the most extreme fear. He than finds a subterranean lair filled with eerie creatures called Deros, and he finds a girl (or a creature much like a girl) chained to a rock and takes her home to care for her. He attempts to feed her but he finds that the only thing that she'll eat is blood. The only problems I had with it were the shaky camera moves (Blair-Witch style)but since he only made it in eight days...he has an excuse, and it will go to a normal camera to give your eyes a break. Overall a masterpiece in psycho-horror.

In Tokyo, the freelancer cameraman Takuyoshi Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto) is obsessed investigating the fear sensation near death. When he shots with his camera a man stabbing himself in the eye in the access to the subway, he seeks what the suicidal might have seen to experiment the same sense of horror the man felt when he died. He finds a passage to the underground of Tokyo where he meets a mysterious naked woman that does not speak and he calls her F (Tomomi Miyashita). He brings F to his place and he has difficulties to feed her, until he discovers that she drinks blood. Masuika becomes a serial killer draining the blood of his victims to nurse F.

"Marebito" is a very weird low-budget movie that discloses the madness process of the lead character through his journey to hell in the underground of Tokyo. This original story is disturbing and unpleasant, using a morbid and creepy atmosphere, to unravel the twisted mind of a deranged man. However this strange movie is recommended for very specific audiences only. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Marebito: Seres Estranhos" ("Marebito: Weird Beings")