We continue 31 Days Of Hell with our review of Marebito.
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| "Damn you Sprint! I keep losing my signal and this weird face keeps popping up!" |
The ancient Japanese word Marebito, which loosely translates to
Unique One or The Stranger from Afar refers
to a supernatural being bringing wisdom and happiness. A mythological idea steeped in traditional
Japanese folklore, it’s a ritual or festive occasion of sorts celebrating
divine entities bestowing their gifts upon villagers. Often thought of as a positive regard for the
otherworldly, the myth of the stranger with inhuman powers seems to have faded
out over the years but is still discussed in textbooks.
Enter J-horror director Takashi Shimizu, best
known for the Ju-On video and film
series before he remade the films in English as The Grudge. The repetitive
and episodic tale of an angry spirit who kills nearly all who come into contact
with it, this was what catapulted Shimizu to the mainstream and eventual the
world over as a top notch perpetrator of horror films. While those films merits are debatable,
typically populated with underwritten clichéd stereotypes not all that
dissimilar from the Friday the 13th
series (not all but most), Ju-On and
The Grudge are mostly Shimizu’s bread
and butter. I was never really a fan of
Shimizu, finding him to be an overrated stylist when compared to directors like
Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. But
then in the heyday of Tartan Asia Extreme DVD releasing, something truly
unique, original and genuinely frightening emerged from Mr. Shimizu: a quickie
shot on digital video in between the production of Ju-On: The Grudge and the US remake of The Grudge called Marebito. Made on a shoestring budget with the great
director Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The
Iron Man) as the central protagonist (or antagonist depending on your point
of view), it’s hard to believe the one film that would ultimately turn me
around on the Grudge director would
be one of his more miniscule efforts.
The story of a videographer who becomes
obsessed with fear after filming a man in a subway committing suicide, Masuoka
(Shinya Tsukamoto) leaves the safe confines of his apartment adorned with video
screens and editing equipment to descend into the subterranean sewers beneath
Japan. Deep within the tunnels, he
happens upon a naked woman (Tomomi Miyashita) chained to a wall who doesn’t
speak, eat or drink. Rescuing her by
bringing her back to his apartment, he quickly discovers the mute woman thirsts
for something a bit more sinister than he expected. Not that this is a problem for Masuoka, who
firmly believes this strange figure will be the key to penetrating the essence
of fear and satiate his obsessions. Via
voiceover narration, Masuoka intimates his oddly sociopathic obsessions to the
viewer and many scenes take the perspective of his fuzzy video camera. While most definitely a Takashi Shimizu film,
this is clearly Tsukamoto’s show and the film would not have been half as
compelling without him. It’s this aspect
which elevates Marebito above Shimizu’s
more popular and polished Ju-On series,
as those films lacked a main character we could invest in irrespective of good
or evil. Tsukamoto himself is a
masterful actor and director and watching Marebito,
you have to wonder how much freedom Shimizu gave Tsukamoto to develop the
character however he pleased.
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| "Things are about to get very nasty." |
As aforementioned, the low budget can be
trying at times with one sequence of an underground city looking very like a
Playstation One full motion video rife with blocky pixilation. Unlike The
Grudge which was all about a buildup to a scream, Marebito is soaked in atmosphere with a subtle ambient score aiding
the loose tension throughout the picture.
It’s also startlingly more violent than The Grudge including a moment in which Masuoka dismisses a graphic
snuff torture video as fake. There’s an
underlying H.P. Lovecraftian surrealism running through the whole thing with
hints dropped about the protagonist’s sanity as to whether or not what we’re seeing
is real or merely a hallucination.
Neither Shimizu nor Tsukamoto tell you what to believe, only leaving you
with Masuoka’s perspective to inform the viewer.
It’s one of those horror films evoking unease
while simultaneously allowing you to make your own judgments about the events
unfolding. The handheld quickie approach
to DV filmmaking is very common in Japan,
with many directors starting out on V-cinema with some managing to be
bumped up to theatrical release. Among
the quickies, Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q and
Takashi Shimizu’s Marebito are the
very best ones, exploiting the limitations of the budget and story size to
extraordinary degrees visually, sonically and conceptually. At last, unlike The Grudge which was all style with no substance, Takashi Shimizu
has finally made a film that’s genuinely really scary with a character you can
invest in carrying the whole thing. Does
Marebito allow you the viewer to see
and feel the fear Masuoka so desperately seeks?
The answer lies deep within the underground lair that is arguably one of
the best low budget horror films to come out of Japan in the last decade.
Score
-Andrew Kotwicki
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