Noroi: The Curse, or: Dam Demons

In a month all about expanding our film horizons on the Collab, we watched…a bunch of horror. We did at least focus on watching horror from Japan & Korea, countries well-versed in making chilling classics in the genre. This week’s pick is a horrifying true story…of made-up events. That REALLY happened.

The Film:

Noroi: The Curse

The Premise:

While making a documentary about his latest investigation, a paranormal researcher vanishes under suspicious circumstances.

The Ramble:

Be cautioned, all who decide to watch this film: it has been deemed too disturbing for the general public to view. So we are warned, anyway. Our film really commits to its setup as a found footage documentary, never once dropping the pretense.

We follow Kobayashi, a researcher who has been investigating paranormal activity for decades through the medium of documentary film-making. His (presumably) last project has ended on a rather dark note; ultimately, his wife died in a mysterious fire in the family home, and Kobayashi himself has been missing since. Not to worry–this is all relatively low spoiler-y, as all of this knowledge drops within the first 10 minutes or so of our film.

Before things all went horribly wrong, Kobayashi was busy being a one-man X-Files stop shop, investigating a woman’s report that she and her young son hear the sounds of crying babies haunting their home. Genuinely awful. Soon after, the neighbor and her daughter die in a suspicious car accident.

Meanwhile, Kobayashi is intrigued by the disappearance of Kana, a girl with psychic abilities, which he observes on…some sort of psychic reality competition? I didn’t 100% understand what was happening in this section honestly, and not because psychic powers were needed to digest it. Probably.

Before her disappearance, tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist Hori visited Kana. Naturally, he has a theory about her absence: she was taken by ectoplasmic worms. The need to straightfacedly respond to statements like this has cut my budding career as a documentary filmmaker tragically short.

To add yet another red thread to the already convoluted investigation board, actress Marika begins behaving oddly after visiting a supposedly haunted shrine and having a minor (major) freakout. Concerned that she’s exhibiting strange behavior at night, Marika agrees to Kobayashi setting up a camera to film her activities. This leads to a major clue when Marika is recorded saying the word “Kagutaba,” which turns out to be a demon imprisoned beneath a village. Every year, the villagers would perform a ritual to appease the demon…that is, until the village was destroyed to make way for the construction of a dam. All of this thrilling to the local historian who only ever gets asked to scan obituaries so people can do their boring genealogy research.

This comes full circle when Kobayashi suspects one of the people he’s already encountered is none other than the daughter of the priest who performed the last appeasement ritual, seemingly becoming possessed by the demon. And yes–things get even more convoluted from here on out, with the bonus of creepy children, fetus embryos, and some seriously shaky camera work. But, you know, intentionally shaky camera work.

The Rating:

3/5 Pink Panther Heads

Supposedly people either think this is the scariest film ever made or boring AF. Guess which camp I fall into. Maybe because we’re watching this after found footage becoming such a trope in horror films, or because I’m tired and my uncultured American eyes didn’t feel like reading subtitles. Whatever the reason, I didn’t get the feeling of dread the film is clearly creating as it builds to events that unfold only in the last 30 minutes or so. I found some of the found footage techniques to be a bit silly and melodramatic, to be honest.

What I do find interesting about this one is that it does capture the research and investigation process in a way that feels organic. At first, the pieces don’t seem to fit together at all as Kobayashi follows whatever leads he can–and it’s not until it’s too late that he understands what’s happening. There are some genuinely chilling scenes and revelations, brought to life by the cast and the jarring film techniques.

When the film works, it’s largely because I enjoy the characters of Marika and Hori so much. Marika is a caring person determined to find out the truth of what’s happening to her; it’s impossible not to hope she will succeed, although the tone of the film suggests otherwise. Hori, our tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, is a character who would annoy me in reality (as conspiracy theorists frequently do) but who is fun onscreen, giving us just a dash of quirkiness needed to liven things up.

I can appreciate the approach, but I wasn’t particularly feeling this one.

Would my blog wife steal creepy fetus embryos for this one or burn it all down? Read her review to find out!

Pulse, or: Connection Error

CW: suicide

I’m not sure what November is for this year beyond crossing off subtitled films from the watchlist, with a special focus on Japan and Korea. Though, like most rules on the Blog Collab, this one feels destined to be broken. If, coincidentally, we happen to be extending Horror Month at the same time, so be it.

The Film:

Pulse (2001)

The Premise:

Following the discovery of a mysterious disk, a young woman in Tokyo tries to understand the strange behavior and disappearances of those around her.

The Ramble:

When she doesn’t hear from coworker Taguchi for over a week, caring Michi begins to worry. Taguchi has been working on a disk for…work reasons? You’ll appreciate my confusion as their employer is a house plant shop, though things like providing detail and making sense aren’t necessarily the top priorities of this film.

After Michi finds Taguchi at home in his apartment, she breathes a small sight of relief, only to watch in horror as her coworker hangs himself abruptly. Apparently the disk is extremely important, as Michi, despite her trauma, makes sure coworker Yabe receives it. As they investigate the disk’s contents with their fellow plant shop employee Junco, something doesn’t seem right, and the images are downright creepy and confusing.

Meanwhile, computer science student Ryosuke is using a disk to install the internet, but encounters some unexpected errors. As part of the install experience, Ryosuke sees footage of ghostly figures who seem to watch him from the other side of the screen. Ostensibly asking for a friend, he asks grad student Harue how one would theoretically capture images on a computer that may be haunted. Armed with his newly acquired knowledge of the print screen key, Ryosuke prepares to return to the cyber world.

Around the same time, Yabe receives a call from a robotic voice asking for help, then disappears. When he returns to work, Yabe is acting all kinds of odd, insisting that he’s seen a horrible face. Michi tries to help her friend despite some dissuasion from her boss, but all she manages to do is learn that Yabe has gone into the forbidden room…an experience he does not recommend.

As Michi encounters increasingly harrowing events, Ryosuke works with Harue to investigate her theory that ghosts cross back to our realm through technology. Those who know attempt to seal off haunted portals with red tape, but these barriers can easily be overcome. It seems Michi and Ryosuke’s paths must eventually cross, but not before quite a lot of ghostly encounters, existential crises, and reflections on the futility of seeking connection. You know…your typical horror fare.

The Rating:

3.5/5 Pink Panther Heads

There are a lot of elements of this film that don’t make much sense to me, but I will say it’s highly effective in terms of creep factor. Things can shift quite abruptly from an ominous feeling of dread to terrifying scenes. Credit to whoever decided blocking out sound except for an awful whisper was the way to go in a few of the film’s scenes, as these really get under my skin.

I do appreciate that the film has a message here, focusing on themes that perceptively relate to technology and isolation, as well as the haunted history of Japan in WWII. In the film, characters who become victims of the ghostly figures disappear entirely, only their shadows remaining. To me, these themes are linked, as the erasure of the past is a necessary consequence of technology taking control of the future and separating people from each other and their shared experiences.

That being said, at certain points I lost the thread. The film is concerned with ideas, which makes it right at home on the Collab. However, the commitment to theme over plot detail is at times a drawback, and the last half hour or so feels a bit rushed and disjointed to me. It takes quite a long time for the two distinct story lines to merge, and this isn’t the most effective approach in my opinion. Though it’s not really the point of our story, I don’t think we get a satisfactory explanation for why any of the events unfold as they do, or how the ghostly figures are connected to the characters’ deaths. Are we meant to accept that ghosts are there to freak people out and make them think of death…because they’re ghosts?

At the end of the day, I will applaud this one for being extremely unsettling and creepy–exactly as a ghost story should be.

Would my blog wife install this one on her early 2000s computer or smash the disk into tiny pieces? Read her review to find out!

The Happiness of the Katakuris, or: Born This Clay

It wouldn’t be the Blog Collab if we weren’t pressing play on a horrible mismatch of genres that shouldn’t work. Horror, musical, comedy, claymation? Surely these elements can never combine in satisfying cinematic harmony. But we’re not necessarily seeking perfection here so much as that certain B-movie je ne sais quoi.

The Film:

The Happiness of the Katakuris

The Premise:

After an unlucky family covers up the suicide of their first inn guest, things…escalate.

The Ramble:

At a hotel restaurant in Japan, a young woman finds a horrible surprise in her meal: a little demonic creature that thinks her uvula looks like a delicious snack. After leaving the woman for dead, the creature undergoes a very quick life cycle, coming full circle as it’s snatched up in a crow’s beak. When an elderly man kills the crow, bringing it down mid-flight, you know ominous events are about to unfold.

The aforementioned man is our narrator’s great-grandfather Jinpei Katakuri, the head of a rather unfortunate family. His son, Masao, laid off from his job, made the seemingly sound decision to buy a remote property sure to transform into a popular tourist destination after the construction of a major road. Major setback to this plan? The road has yet to be built.

Masao’s daughter Shizue lives with the family, along with her brother Masayuki and daughter Yurie, the narrator. Shizue is divorced and falls in and out of love too quickly. Masayuki has a violent temper and is attempting to leave his criminal past behind. Yurie herself is a child but old enough to realize her family is leaning heavily on the dysfunctional side of the scale.

Just as the family is prepared to give up on making a living from the inn, they finally welcome their first guest on a dark and stormy night. Unfortunately, their guest is extremely depressed, ultimately dying by suicide when he stabs himself with a hotel key. When the family discovers the body, they decide to cover things up, fearing their first guest’s suicide will doom their business.

Soon after, a man claiming to be a member of the British Royal Navy arrives, and Shizue is instantly smitten. It becomes increasingly clear that the man is not who he appears to be, especially as he makes ever more outlandish claims about his connections to the royal family. After he leaves, Shizue receives a call implying he has died…but is that the truth?

When a somewhat renowned Sumo wrestler arrives at the inn with a teen girl, it’s not long before both end up dead. Because of the suspicious number of bodies piling up, the family starts to believe Masayuki may be responsible due to his criminal past.

Add a few musical numbers to the mix, a plan to finally begin building the long-promised road, and some reanimating corpses, and you’ve got…a rather surreal experience.

The Rating:

3/5 Pink Panther Heads

The premise is irresistible, but the loose structure of the film itself is confusing and often frustrating. I appreciate the musical numbers so much, especially the extremely dark ones that discuss hiding the body of the first guest and discovering the exhumed bodies have become zombified.

I would have liked a bit more direction here, though, and some idea of what is to come. I expected more horror, but the film is more interested in exploring themes around family and social commentary about success/happiness and the perception of these…as well as just doing whatever the fuck it wants to. Some of these themes don’t work well when everyone in the family is problematic to some degree. I found it difficult to care about the characters and what happened to them as they spent most of their time being horrible, making questionable decisions, and having things go miraculously well despite their incompetence.

Props for weirdness, though. I’m struggling to think of a recent watch as unabashedly strange and visually daring as this one.

Would my blog wife save this one from an unexpected lava flow or bury it along with the other bodies? Read her review to find out!

Tag, or: Pens Before Men(s)

This month on the Collab promises to be full of May…hem?  Eh eh?  Dad jokes aside, we will be fully embracing  films that, in the grand tradition of the blog, are more than a little strange, surreal, nonsensical, or odd.  As always,  there’s plenty of room for us to do whatever the fucking fuck we feel like unless, like the characters in this week’s film, destiny is playing a much stronger hand than we realize.

The Film:

Tag (2015)

The Premise:

A teen girl in Japan finds herself surrounded by horrifically gory, surreal murders as she experiences several dreams, realities, and/or versions of herself.

The Ramble:

On their merry way for a weekend trip, an all-girls school in Japan is in high spirits.  Singing, pillow fighting, and engaging in light-hearted mischief, things seem to be off to a great start.

The trip takes a very dark turn, however, when an accident kills all but one of the girls–rather gorily shearing almost all of them in half.  Mitsuko, the only survivor, was saved as she had knelt down to retrieve a pen knocked from her hands by a classmate.

See what you get for messing with my pens, bitches.

Though she has survived the accident, Mitsuko isn’t in the clear yet as the whole ordeal seems to have been caused by…a murder wind?  I guess if Evil Dead can do it, why not this film?  Mitsuko does eventually escape to the woods, but not before the wind catches up with some unlucky joggers and bicyclists.  It just goes to show that absolutely no one can stand a bicyclist.

Stumbling across what seems to be another massacre at a river, Mitsuko shakily washes off the blood spatters and changes clothes.  She then comes across another school, where the students know her and believe she has a severe case of amnesia.  Luckily, her bff Aki explains who everyone is in their friend group and shows her where her classes are.

Scenes from a horror film or a Behind the Music episode about a teen girl group?

Since Mitsuko is still terrified of the wind and incredibly confused, Aki and the 2 other girls in the friend group cut class to hang out by the river.  When they hear about Mitsuko’s earlier “dream,” the girls jokingly dismiss it–except for Sur, the vaguely punk rebel of the group, of course.  Sur insists it’s possible that the dream really happened and Mitsuko is experiencing one of many alternate realities.  It gets super philosophical here, but I feel the big takeaway is that fate can only be tricked with something dramatically and unexpectedly out of character.

When the girls return to school, terror strikes again when the enraged teachers suddenly open fire on the students, sending Mitsuko running for her life again.  She finds a police station and realizes she has transformed into Keiko, a 25-year-old woman on the way to her wedding.  Help arrives in the form of Aki, who seems to be completely off her rocker when she starts killing all bridesmaids in sight.  It’s clear Keiko and Aki are going to have to fight their way out of this one.

We’ve all been to one of those weddings…

Having escaped the wedding, Mitsuko takes on another form, Izumi.  She finds herself in the middle of a race, running to the finish line yet seemingly trapped in another scenario that ends with everyone around her dead.

Is there no escape for Mitsuko from this horror show?  And who is she, anyway–Mitsuko, Keiko, or Izumi?

The Rating:

3.5/5 Pink Panther Heads

I don’t know what a fair rating for this one is as I’m still puzzling over it and (spoiler/not really a spoiler) I would’ve really liked a bit more clarity in the end.  But honestly, despite a lack of understanding, I had a lot of fun watching this.  It does sometimes beat us over the head with its message about destiny, control, and the surrealism of reality.  What saved this one for me was a willingness to counteract a serious message with fun B horror tropes and an improbable amount of gore.

The film is grounded by Mitsuko and Aki’s bond and the genuine affection between them as besties.  There is a hint of romance between the 2 girls, but the film leaves this open to interpretation for the aromantic among us.

In the end, the message of the film is surprisingly feminist as the nature of Mitsuko’s existence is revealed.  Big shocker–men are just the absolute worst.

Did Christa get on board with this girl gang or would she kick it back to another reality?  Read her review here to find out!