This one is going to be random. First of all, there is not a lot of Asian horror on this blog, and it was a topic that for quite a while interested me a lot. I used to rent anything from the video store that had the wonderful Tartan Asia Extreme label on it.
It's like seeing an old friend...
I google image search Tartan Asia Extreme, and so many flicks I saw come flooding back. There is something about specifically early 2000's Japanese horror films that was gold. I mean, don't take just my word for it, that was when things like The Ring, The Eye, The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse, One Missed Call and more were adapted into awful US remakes and distributed here. For a while, those movies were simply put: The Shit.
There is something about the understated and ambiguous approach had by these films that simply made them a wonder to watch when I was about 16-21. I remember watching such films as the well known Audition and Battle Royale, and unknown movies such as the Korean film H and R-Point. I was all over that shit, to break it down for ya.
I may or may not have seen Marebito at that point in my life. Parts of it certainly felt familiar. I never kept very good track of what I've seen in my life at all, which was part of my inspiration to start this blog in general. God fucking knows how many of these goddamn movies I've seen, how many I forgot, and how many I'll end up seeing twice for that very reason.
Marebito is directed by Takashi Shimizu who did The Grudge, and it stars director and actor Shin'ya Tsukamoto as a quiet cameraman who's sort of sucked into a web of darkness and weird stuff after witnessing a man kill himself. He sees that the man was terrified, perhaps of what he was seeing. He has a vague sort of internal quest to become as terrified as the man must've been, and embarks to discover what was terrifying him. This leads him to the arguably symbolic discovery of a unknown woman he finds chained to a wall in the "underworld" who only drinks blood and can't speak.
It's a largely hallucinatory surreal quest where some parts are wisely left ambiguous, some things are explained, and some are only touched on to never be addressed again. The truth of the whole film is arguably unimportant, because in the end it's a slow burn horror-ish type film meant to unsettle, and in this goal it was successful.
Tsukamoto's character is very undeveloped and at times his motivation unclear, however through a good script and good acting, he somehow pulls of a very interesting main character who we can't help but feel a strange connection to. The music is phenomenal, and the movie goes by quickly for something which is essentially extremely slow, where very little ends up happening in the end.
Does it scare? I would argue that it does. This is not the jumpscare type, nor is it gory or violent. It's a slow burn, and the scares are simply more of the unsettling type. If one was to watch this late at night, unsure of what one was getting into, I could see it being very unsettling. The imagery is bizarre, and lingers with you. It's also something which one would tend to think about after viewing it, given all the unanswered questions and interesting plot points touched on.
But at the same time, it wasn't ALL that good. It felt a bit undeveloped, and there was certainly a lot of style over substance. I think it felt at times like they were just filming things "just cause" and that there wasn't much of a real script or idea they were working with.... And despite liking it, I still feel inclined to give it about 3 stars. It's a great idea! I could see it being better, however.
