Hausu

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.

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.

House (Hausu) is a film directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi and stars a variety of young girls as they go on a chaperoned trip to one of the groups Aunt's. This aunt, however, seems to be more than she appears, as the group is slowly torn asunder (sometimes literally) by the house in a variety of ways.

This film is an embodiment of avant-garde when that was still a new thing. This film reminds me a lot of Jean Luc-Godards "The Weekend" in its experimental and non-linear cinematography. This film is wacky, with each shot almost bending ones mind. Film gradients, props, music, effects and so on are bombarding the viewer constantly, and make even the mundane seem incredible. The story here is mundane. A group of students go to a house and are accosted by the possessed abode, as the aunt turns out to be a witch. The creative part here is what happens visually. The characters were fun. Each one is a literal representation of a specific idea or thing. Nicknames like Gorgeous, Fantasy, Kung-Fu and so on abound, with each nickname being a representation of the person in question. These traits come back to bite them (sometimes literally). Piano's chow down on fingers, mattresses attack, mirrors possess, and much more. At one point, a man is turned into a pile of banana's!

This film is wacky in many ways. It possesses a wonderful style, contagious charm, and many fun and interesting elements. It is not pure horror, certainly coming through as a comedy. I had a brilliant time with this film, and look forward to watching this film again soon. What a ride! Highly recommended for those looking for something interesting and weird.

About 2 months after obtaining this title, I've not been able to find words to describe this movie, other than strange and bizarre. Depending on your mood it's either a noble failure or a triumph in film making. I couldn't use the terms ground breaking to describe it, but there's something important about the texture of this film.

Imagine John Hughes and Sam Raimi kicking back and doing some hard drugs and deciding to make a movie together. It might look like this. It spends a good amount of time before it gets anywhere, focusing on four teen girls whose names seem to support their abilities, expertise, or interests. At this point, it plays almost like an average teen rom-com. But note the campy soundtrack, dancing school girls, and some rather strange almost comic book like backgrounds.

It starts getting interesting as the girls set forth to movie's namesake house. They flashback and do storytelling in the form of a silent movie. We get to see some slapstick characters which don't belong in a horror movie, and we have a roll call of our four heroines as they head off into the woods. Enter the House alluded to in the film's title.

So the horror begins. But this is Sam Raimi style horror. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of this inspired Evil Dead - if the film was available - who knows. There's a whole series of odd scenes. Most notable is the infamous piano scene, where a piano devours someone. But that's not all. There's an evil kitty, a clock the spills out blood ala Evil Dead, a river of blood and some kooky camera work and odd cut aways! "Ambitious" might be the operative word to describe this movie. When I watch it, I'm not quite sure if it all works. The effects are crude, but not in the Ed Wood "you can see the strings" style. For me, some of it is like reading a comic book. They're bigger than life, not meant to scare you in the classical sense. But it is unlike anything you've seen before.

I guess if I have any gripe about the film, it's that it takes a good while to get really fun, but when you get there, it's an insane joyride. But it's not a normal movie viewing experience and a rating does not serve it well. Watch it for yourself - and it probably wouldn't hurt to have a drink or two while doing so.

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.