Marebito

Also known as 'The Stranger from Afar', this Japanese horror film focuses on a freelance photographer who rescues a naked woman chained to a rock in a subway tunnel; he takes her home, only to discover that she is more animalistic than human with a taste for blood. The film is pretty much as weird as it sounds with little indication of just how much of what occurs is hallucination, imaginary or real. It remains a gripping ride though even when everything cannot be deciphered thanks to a truckload of atmosphere and a genuinely unsettling turn by Tomomi Miyashita as the mysterious woman. Some of the symbolism hits home quite well too with the protagonist viewing himself as a vampire, feeding off filming the misery and pain of others (sort of like Jake Gyllenhaal's character in 'Nightcrawler', but with a moral compass here). The film also taps into some curious territory early on as the protagonist announces a desire to find what caused a man to be so terrified that he committed suicide before his camera lens; some of his soliloquies in this early part of the film bring to mind 'Videodrome' as he equates cameras to the retinas of human eyes. One's mileage with 'Marebito' will no doubt vary depending on one's tolerance for the unexplained and deliberate ambiguity, but it is certainly refreshingly different from most other vampire movies out there.

This was just a strange movie, but not in a cool way, like Forbidden Zone, or Uzumaki. Just weird.

All I can say is that a creepy voyeur cameraman sees a guy commit suicide by stabbing himself, and wonders what he had seen that made him so terrified. Any more said would ruin it.

Sure, the acting by the guy was good, and you never know what is going to happen next, and it is well shot, but it is ultimately boring, and the ending doesn't satisfy you. I did enjoy it on some level, but by the end, I was ready to stop watching.

6/10

Not too much to say about this one. The story starts off relatively interesting but pretty much dies on the vine. The "twist" ending doesn't really do much to save it either.

A guy is obsessed with "terror" and is searching for the "ultimate fear". He goes around looking for it and comes across a strange blood-drinking chick instead. They hang around a bunch and then the "revalation" as to who this chick is and what this guy's life is all about is made known...

The beginning of the film started off with some decent concepts including some Lovecraft-ian references that were never expanded on, and eventually just ends up being a bore. Nothing really notable at all in this one. Not horrible and will probably be loved by J-horror bandwagon-jumpers, but I've seen too much of this stuff (ranging from "classic" to flat-out horrible...) to be thrilled with every new one that comes down the pike. Not the worst of the bunch but very, very average..5/10

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")

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.