Marebito

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.

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 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

First off, I hated Ju-On. I thought it was derivative garbage of the J-horror variety (most J-Horror, which many American's think is "cult", is the equivalent of teen slasher flicks in their respective countries). That said, I was expecting nothing from this film. Instead, I got a Japanese David Cronenberg film, for all intents and purposes. This film would make an excellent companion piece to Cronenberg's Videodrome.

Both deal with technology and alienation in an urban setting. While in Videodrome it's the proliferation of mass media that causes the protagonists reality slip, here it's the creation of such media. The main character is a freelance videographer who makes a living filming the horrible things that people do to each other (and themselves) in the crowded yet isolated world of the big city. He eventually comes to understand that nothing is more cruel than what he does. He is, in a figurative sense, a vampire. He sucks the blood of the living into his lens, and thrives off the rewards. But he is lost.

Then he meets...a girl? A creature? A vampire? A hallucination? The fact that she has no recognizable emotion or attachment, and lives only to feed on the blood of people is a projection of what he is so ashamed of.

This film really gets into the feel of alienation (much the way "Clean, Shaven" and Cronenberg's "Spider" did) and makes you feel the way the populace who views his videos do. Disturbed, but secretly glad and thrilled that misery was put on film.

Which leads me to the presentation. Many have griped about the Digital Film approach, which, as most cinephiles know, leads to a harsh lighting scheme and stark contrasts- none of the lushness of film- and jerky movement feel. Shimizou could have easily done this on film if he had wanted to, but instead, I feel, made a choice to use digital...it's the same format that his protagonist records horrible images on. One turn deserves another. I enjoyed this aspect, as the presentation aspect of a film is rarely intrinsic to both the style and subtext of the film.

That said, it's not entirely successful. A few scenes could have used better FX work or shot choice/editing, but, hey, he shot this on the fly in 8 days, on his way to make another J-Horror "scary-kid" schlockfest. This film shows he is more capable than that. Fans of J-horror may want to avoid this, whereas if, like me, you're a fan of shock-cinema and narrative surrealism (Lynch, some Cronenberg, you) may enjoy this.