2000s Takashi Miike Horror Part Two

GOZU
(2003)
Overall: GOOD

In typical Takashi Miike fashion, his wackadoo yakuza comedy nightmare Gozu, (Gokudō kyōfu dai-gekijō: Gozu, Yakuza Horror Theatre: Cow's Head), is outrageously incoherent and perverse, no more or less for the faint of heart than any other work in his filmography.  Reuniting with Ichi the Killer screenwriter Sakichi Sato, it is littered with hilariously odd, psycho-sexual details like a mob boss who can only get it up if he literally has a golden spoon shoved up his ass, an elderly female hotel owner who is all too eager to lactate for costumers while whipping her dim-witted brother into being a spiritual medium, and, (in a WTF/midnight movie finale for the books), a protagonist whose brother turns into a woman that gives birth to a full-grown version of himself when they have incestual sex with each other.  There is also a guy with a giant cow head who shows up in dreams.  Fun!  As one could logically guess, MAKING any logical guess as to what any of this means is a futile exercise.  While much of it is too juvenile in its grossness to take seriously, (even in a arthouse, shock cinema sense), and it has an uncharacteristically meandering pace, it is still a wild freakshow that will make most viewers run screaming to the hills while simultaneously delighting the connoisseur of bad taste.

 

ONE MISSED CALL
(2003)
Overall: MEH

Filmmaker Takashi Miike's take on technological J-horror comes after some of the more prominent films that unmistakably inspired it, to the point where this one can be seen as at least partially derivative.  One Missed Call, (Chakushin ari), makes people's cell phones the specific tool for a supernatural curse transference which is just as silly/clever of an idea as VHS tapes in Hideo Nakata's Ringu or the internet in Kiyoshi Kurosawa Kairo.  The problem lies in how the plot unfolds though, meaning predictable and uninspired.  As the characters try and survive the long, black-haired, vengeful spirit that is after them who will strike at a specific time, they go through all of the standard blunders of denial, investigation, "solving" the mystery when there is still thirty-minutes left in the running time, and of course getting duped by a twist at the last possible moment.  On the plus side, Miike takes a restrained approach to the material as there is little humor or incidental music and it largely has the calm and meticulous pacing that is purposely lacking in the director's more ultra-violent and jacked-up works.

 

THREE...EXTREMES
(2004)
Dir - Park Chan-wook/Takashi Miike/Fruit Chan
Overall: GOOD

A sequel to the identically structured 2002 movie Three except utilizing comparatively more known directors from just as many different countries, Three...Extremes, (Utsukushī Yoru, Zankokuna, Asa, Sseuli, Monseuteo), is a typical anthology horror offering in the fact that each of its individual stories are inconsistent in quality.  Thankfully though, they are all interesting at worst and memorable at best.  "The Box" from the highly prolific and frequently over the top Takashi Miike is the most surreal, unorthodox, and easily the least commercial entry.  It is also too slow for it's own pretentious good, a similar pacing issue that also befalls Fruit Chan's otherwise calmly disturbing "Dumplings", (which would be expanded upon to feature length as Chan's very next film).  The real standout is Oldboy director Park Chan-wook's "Cut" which dips its toes into torture porn, yet manages to have a sufficient sense of humor about itself at the same time.  It is also the most elaborately staged and features an amusingly deranged performance from South Korean actor Im Won-hee.  None of the segments could be considered a waste though, making this a strong contender for the century's best anthology horror offering from the East thus far.

2000s Takashi Miike Horror Part One

VISITOR Q
(2001)
Overall: MEH

Basking in the bizarre and challenging as he is wont to do, Takashi Miike's Visitor Q, (Bijitā Kyū), was his entry into CineRocket's Love Cinema series of straight-to-video, exploitation movies.  It is also one that pushes things to gross-out oddity territory with an unnatural tone that is at odds with every moment on screen.  The low-budget, digital film aesthetic gives way to mostly long, single-take shots in unassuming locations; shots which feature the world's most dysfunctional family doing the most dysfunctional things  The son gets brutalized by his classmates who kick the shit out of him, shoot fireworks into his house, and force him to shit outside in front of them, said son violently beats up his mother who is a heroin junkie prostitute that learns to lactate wildly, and the father cums too fast while having sex with his prostitute daughter before raping a co-worker after accidentally murdering her.  Plus, lots of other equally heartwarming stuff.  Clearly in the deranged, midnight movie, black comedy vein of other films that satirize family dynamics in the most preposterous and extreme fashion, Miike's fly-on-the-wall approach to the material is coldly detached, yet the goings-on here are so bonkers and over the top in their unpleasantness that it cannot help but to be funny at times.  It also begs the question of "Who is a movie like this for?" since there is plenty here that will not satisfy any viewer's tastes, even the weirdest ones.

 

ICHI THE KILLER

(2001)

Overall: GOOD

 

Arguably Takashi Miike's most aggressively provocative work in ultra-violence, (which is saying something), Ichi the Killer, (Koroshiya Ichi, Hitman One), takes a similarly over-the-top approach to its button-pushing subject matter as Oliver Stone did in Natural Born Killers.  More of a stylized yakuza film than a cartoonish acid trip, Miike makes no attempts to glorify a cinematic universe where virtually everyone on screen is some variation of a sadistically deranged headcase.  The gore is ridiculously excessive, but the crop of characters range from psychotic gangster, to bruised and battered female, to wimpish lunatic, to terrified goon; all of them being sadly disturbed instead of ultra-cool.  Even as the enforcer-turned-gang-leader Kakihara, Tadanobu Asano comes off like an absurd madman with his sliced up mug, face piercings, dyed-blonde mop top, and loud wardrobe as he gleefully slices and dices up people, (and himself), for a living.  Nao Omori's title character is the most pathetic and tragic of them all; manipulated into being some sort of yakuza-murdering anti-hero by Shinya Tsukamoto's odd handler who is inexplicably revealed to have a body builder physique under his trench coat.  Plenty odd and not for the squeamish by any stretch of the imagination, it throws the viewer right into the blood-red muck, torture, rape, and mutilation with no life vest on.

 

THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS
(2001)
Overall: GOOD
 
No one can argue that Takashi Miike is not one to A) make a shitload of movies and B) take ridiculous chances with many of those movies.  The Happiness of the Katakuris, (Katakuri-ke no Kōfuku) is his nonsensical genre mash-up reworking of the 1998 South Korean film The Quiet Family and it certainly pulls no punches in trying to be several desperately different things at once.  Horror, comedy, musical and a parody of all three, the "burst into song" moments are as jarringly silly as the stop-motion animation ones, with everyone on screen being fully committed to a story about a family that runs a bed and breakfast at the foot of a volcano.  They also constantly panic and bury the bodies of their guests that keep either accidentally or intentionally murdering people, if the family does not accidentally or intentionally murder them first that is.  The singing is intentionally lousy and of the bad karaoke variety, as is the synchronized dance sequences which usually take on a stylized aesthetic that kicks the film out of the already flimsy verisimilitude that it is trying to maintain.  While it is over-stuffed at a hundred and thirteen minutes with Miike seeming to have so much fun with the presentation that he fails to cut scenes out before they become monotonous, this still gets by on its wacky, "WTF am I watching?" charm.

1990s Asian Horror Part Eight

A CHINESE GHOST STORY III

(1991)

Dir - Ching Siu-tung

Overall: GOOD

With two of the previous actors returning and playing different characters, (Joey Wong and Jacky Cheung, respectably), plus director Ching Siu-tung still on board, A Chinese Ghost Story III, (Sinneoi Jauwan III: Dou Dou Dou), is perfectly in line with each entry that came before it.  Set a hundred years after the first film and resurrecting the tree demon from its century-long slumber, the story follows a similar trajectory of said, initial installment.  A sheepish monk and his wise, no-nonsense Master hide out in a haunted temple with a spell-casting mercenary at their side, only to encounter beautiful ghost succubi and do battle against otherworldly forces which take the form of a ridiculous, androgynous madame spirit as well as enormous puppets that spring right out of the cursed earth.  The tone is still hyper kinetic and light on its feet with silliness, yet there is a competitively stronger emphasis on naughty seduction, mild nudity, and severed body parts that itch this one closer into adult territory than straight goof-ridden fantasy.  While some could argue that the plot is merely a rehash and ergo too derivative to keep things together, the grandiose set pieces fly at the screen at a mile a minute and are arguably the most inventive and fun in the whole series.

BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL

(1995)

Dir - Shinichi Fukazawa

Overall: MEH

With a title like Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, one would go in with some unshakable expectations and for at least half of the running time, Shinichi Fukazawa's only movie of any kind delivers on its promised ridiculousness.  A Z-rent, SOV Evil Dead knock-off, it was originally shot in 1995, yet decades went by before it garnished any form of release, making this sort of a long lost gem that hardly anyone knew about for most of its existence.  Running only sixty-two minutes, it takes eighteen of them until anything happens and even then, things only fly off the rails for the second, claustrophobic half where Fukazawa, his girlfriend, and a psychic get trapped in a tiny, tiny house to do battle, with the latter two getting possessed by stop-motion/papier-mâché goo that looks like a combination of red Play-Doh, spaghetti sauce, and ground beef.  The "special" effects are laughably appalling, (which is a large selling point of course), and Fukazawa has the charisma of a soiled rug, that is until he Hulks-out of his shirt in the last few moments and delivers some groan-worthy one-liners that even Bruce Campbell would be embarrassed by.  Derivative, painfully cheap, and fifty-percent boring as shit, it is still eventually worth one's time when it stops messing around and delivers the stupid.

AUDITION

(1999)

Dir - Takashi Miike

Overall: GOOD

Takashi Miike's first venture of many into horror with Audition, (Ōdishon), also doubled as his most lauded work in the genre, particularly across the Pacific where its torture porn finale was met with wide arms amongst exploitation fans.  An adaptation of Ryu Murakami's novel of the same name and put into motion by the company that produced Ringu the previous year, its gradual tonal shift is masterfully handled by Miike, presenting the first act as something that more resembles a light romantic comedy before unveiling a dubious mystery which finally sets up the brutal last act that is hardly the stuff of easy consumption.  It can be argued that Miike goes too far with the torture scene, yet it actually "only" takes up ten minutes of screen time and is bookended by surreal dream sequences that both offer the viewer a break and tap into the psyche of Ryo Ishibashi's protagonist whose unassuming chauvinism and smitten obsession has led him right into the arms of Eihi Shiina's avenging, feminist angel of death.  The fact that Shiina plays her with an icy, porcelain doll calm is perfectly disturbing, subverting the docile Japanese woman stereotype while making Ishibashi's character come off as both a buffoon and a victim at the same time.  It is ultimately a film that can be appreciated more than it can be enjoyed, but it is also more chilling and artful than obnoxiously brutal.

2014 Horror Part Thirteen

MARSHLAND

Dir - Alberto Rodríguez

Overall: GOOD

A police procedural thriller boasting strong performances and a nuanced script, writer/director Alberto Rodríguez's Marshland, (La isla mínima), handles its disturbing subject manner respectfully.  Coauthored by Rodríguez's frequent collaborator Rafael Cobos, the film is set in 1980, five years after the end of the Francoist Dictatorship whose ripple effects still linger in the small, backwater town in which things are set.  The detective team played by Raúl Arévalo and Javier Gutiérrez are far from morally ideal characters, yet faced up against a series of murders, rapes, and tortures committed on teenage girls, the "good guy's" dubious past and police methods are put into a perspective that still paints a troubled playing field where there are no true winners, just those whose ends may justify less horrific means.  Largely void of humor, the tone never becomes too overbearing thanks to the sincere presentation which boats nothing but a most naturalistic and grounded aesthetic that is impressively realized.  Rodríguez also wisely shies away from any and all exploitative measures and keeps the most unwholesome aspects of his story off screen, making them more psychologically troubling in the process.

 

UNFRIENDED

Dir - Leo Gabriadze

Overall: MEH

 

The gimmicky popcorn horror film Unfriended is better than one would expect from such usually forgettable, bottom-barrel garbage tailored to jump scare-craving teenagers, but it is still not without its flaws.  Told exclusively through a MacBook screencast where several annoying high-schoolers video chat with each other on the one year anniversary of their friend's suicide which was brought on by a viral video of her being embarrassingly drunk to say the least, the story deals exclusively with bullying amongst peers and its psychologically ravaging effects.  The young cast does a solid job of portraying their flawed, emotionally immature characters who scream, cry, overreact, and crack jokes at each other's expense in a typically exaggerated manner befitting Hollywood's version of what they think teenagers act like.  All of this is forgivable and even borderline interesting from a narrative perspective, but the film drops the ball when it tries to go for shock-inducing violence.  Every "kill" in the movie is unintentionally funny, plus the all-powerful supernatural elements at work become less creepy as everyone on screen does not run out into the streets looking for their parents or something, (anything), that knee-jerk logic would dictate.  Nelson Greaves's script makes several attempts to explain such "dumb people in horror movies" malfunctions, but plausibility gets increasingly side-tracked to get to more loud drama and goofy death sequences.

 

AS THE GODS WILL

Dir - Takashi Miike

Overall: GOOD

Following up the same year's wildly different Over Your Dead Body, Takashi Miike returns with yet another horror entry, adapting the first part of Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akeji Fujimura's manga As the Gods Kill, (Kami-sama no Iu Tōri).  Those venturing in without any information on the source material at their disposal may be lost at the open-ended finale which clearly sets up a sequel that as of yet has not emerged, but there are enough inventively ridiculous set pieces here to delight the uninitiated.  Set up as a series of children's games that are controlled by mysterious forces that are either aliens, deities, both, neither, or who knows what, (since no proper origin for such things is given), they all have a violent and demented, "survival of the fittest" slant.  This theme of "God's chosen ones" is played throughout as the characters struggle to come to terms with, (or in one of their cases, fully embrace), the situation that they are forced in, which results in more tragic casualties as it goes along.  At the end of the day though, it is just fun to watch a bunch of high-schoolers try and outsmart a Daruma doll, a Maneki Neko cat, Kokeshi wooden dolls, a white polar bear on a surf board, and Matryoshka dolls from brutally murdering them by way of convoluted, occasionally unclear rules and methods.

2014 Horror Part Twelve

THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT

Dir - Bobby Roe

Overall: MEH

 

To enjoy a found footage film like The Houses October Built, (as is the case with many found footage offerings), one has to suspend disbelief to a breaking point.  This is not to say that director Bobby Roe's independent debut here is not without its merit; it is just that the problems are the ones that such movies with problems usually face.  It begins typically enough with a text introduction as well as a disturbing scene that then follows with a "Six days earlier" tag that lets us catch up.  So right away, the issue of who is editing this footage together, where some of it even came from, and why it is presented in such an entertaining fashion becomes an unstoppable elephant in the room.  Outside of that, the characters themselves are given a reason to go as far as they do down their ultimately disastrous trek, but again, plausibility suffers as their behavior seems so idiotic as to routinely break the spell.  This is a shame really as the actually tension building is expertly handled by Roe and his cast.  The things that are meant to be terrifying certainly are, but the hackneyed presentation, stupid Halloween masks, and awful, awful industrial metal music mostly ruins the experience.

 

OVER YOUR DEAD BODY

Dir - Takashi Miike

Overall: GOOD

Drenched in intensely low-key, otherworldly atmosphere, Takashi Miike's Over Your Dead Body, (Kuime), emphasizes one of the many stylistic motifs that the prolific filmmaker toys with.  A "life imitating art", story-within-a-story adaptation of 1825's benchmark Japanese ghost tale "Yotsuya Kaidan", the melding between two supernaturally overtaken worlds is purposely obscured with an almost unbearably slow-boil approach that will surely prove detrimentally excessive for movie-goers who possess a minimal amount of patience.  Bouncing between the contemporary setting and the elaborately detailed stage production rehearsals of the aforementioned part-source material, Miike utilizes the same comatose pacing and unnatural mood in both.  Until the most harrowing of circumstances occurs, the character's primarily behave in a cold, emotionally ambiguous fashion that keeps the tone in check, plus the sound design combines extremely long periods of no incidental music whatsoever with a traditionally eerie score interjecting during the period piece throwbacks.  Being a Miike movie, fan's of the director's penchant for unpleasant, extreme visuals will not be disappointed, that is so long as they can endure the deliberately unhurried presentation.

DIG TWO GRAVES

Dir - Hunter Adams

Overall: GOOD

A strong debut from independent director/co-writer Hunter Adams, Dig Two Graves is an evocative and sincere Midwestern revenge story that weaves its supernatural components in a befitting way for the material.  Chosen as part of the Independent Filmmaker Project's Emerging Narrative Program's twenty scrips in 2013, it went into production in Southern Illinois which offers up an appropriately rustic locale for both its 1940s and 1970s time periods.  Both Ted Levine and Troy Ruptash deliver the most effective performances, one as a benevolent, weathered, marble-mouthed Sheriff with a regretful past and the other a fully grown gypsy kid with a vengeful agenda.  Relative newcomer Samantha Isler is strong as well, giving her young grief-stricken protagonist a sense of survivor's remorse that makes it believable that the unwholesome, mystical temptation that is thrown her way would hold sway.  The story's themes are delivered without any overbearing sentimentality and the few examples of dark magic that we are show could have easily come off as silly in a more genre-pandering fashion than is allowed here.  Last of all, the cinematography from Eric Maddison is naturalist and lovely, even with its derivative, de-saturated color pallet in tow.

Masters of Horror Season One Part Three

FAIR-HAIRED CHILD
(2006)
Dir - William Malone
Overall: GOOD

The sole Masters of Horror entry from William Malone, (Scared to Death, Feardotcom), is possibly the most stark, humorless one in the season.  Scripted by Matt Greenberg, (Halloween H20, 1408), Fair-Haired Child presents a strange premise where an eccentric, grieving family turns to the occult and it is all played consistently straight, without any cornball acting or over the top set pieces.  That said, Lori Petty is a bit stiff as the troubled mother and there is at least one gruesome moment that comes off a little intentionally silly.  Elsewhere though, it features a genuinely disturbing monster design with Malone using the same herky-jerky, spastic editing technique he indulged in his House on Haunted Hill remake.  The more serious tone is a welcome change to the series and overall it delivers enough creepiness to recommend.

SICK GIRL
(2006)
Dir - Lucky McKee
Overall: GOOD

Throughout the majority of Sick Girl, director Lucky Mckee manages to have concocted something seemingly impossible which is an adorable horror movie.  Working again with Angela Bettis after their impressive collaboration in May, a similarly quirky, darkly comedic tone is maintained and the actress once more shows a remarkable talent for playing hilariously eccentric, socially awkward characters.  Essentially a love story that only briefly goes sinister before unveiling some freakish visuals at the end, it is that rarest of instances where something in the horror genre makes oddball cuteness actually rather heartwarming.  Deliberately silly and gross with some wonderful profanity sprinkled in for good measure, it is probably the most fun entry in the Masters of Horror's debut season.

PICK ME UP
(2006)
Dir - Larry Cohen
Overall: MEH

In what would be his final directorial effort, Larry Cohen's Pick Me Up is rather typical of the director's work.  Featuring yet another eccentric performance from character actor Michael Moriarty whose bizarre mannerisms and line readings helped to further ruin earlier Cohen entries The Stuff and Q: The Winged Serpent, the film is likewise morbidly humorous yet darker and more suspenseful in tone.  While certain slasher stereotypes are upheld and characters occasionally speak in lame cliches, the story by genre author David Schow does have a singular premise which is rather interesting.  Cohen's quirkiness and botching of tone is comparatively subdued though it still makes for an odd offering that is only partially enjoyable.

HAECKEL'S TALE
(2006)
Dir - John McNaughton
Overall: MEH

Originally slated for George A. Romero to be behind the lens, scheduling conflicts brought John McNaughton, (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), on board instead for the Clive Barker adaptation Haeckel's Tale.  Essentially the author's more nasty re-telling of Frankenstein with a black magic/necromancy angle thrown in for good measure, its ending at least is appropriately perverse and borders on absurdity.  McNaughton plays things rather straight though and even as it all goes over the top, it does so in a controlled manner.  It is regrettable then that the middle section is a slog, dragging the whole thing down considerably.  The disturbingly macabre finish may be worth the wait for some viewers, but the sluggish trek to get there does undermine things just a bit too much.

IMPRINT
(2006)
Dir - Takashi Miike
Overall: GOOD

Japan's most prolific genre filmmaker, (by a mile), Takashi Miike's lone contribution to Masters of Horror was the only one in the series to be rejected by Showtime due to the director's usual practice of jacking up the violence to uncomfortably disturbing degrees.  Imprint certainly goes there with some eye-wincing torture segments and shots of aborted fetuses, but the film is not exclusively gratuitous.  Technically a traditional kaidan story, the pacing is gradual and Miike sprinkles some atmospheric and bizarre creepiness here and there.  Performance wise, it is uneven with the almost exclusively Japanese cast speaking in rough English and villainous character actor Billy Drago overdoing it quite a bit.  Impressively otherworldly and bold, it is worth examining for those that can stomach its unflinching components though.

2012 Horror Part Six

LESSON OF THE EVIL
Dir - Takashi Miike
Overall: GOOD

Takashi Miike is something of a Japanese Michael Bay; someone whose films are equal parts over the top, ridiculous, and panned by many critics, (Audition notwithstanding).  He is also one of the most prolific Asian filmmakers working and has more than several in the horror camp.  Lesson of the Evil is a very morally bizarre work as it makes itself lurk in such a disturbing premise that most filmgoers will be naturally uncomfortable throughout viewing it.  Yet Miike presents this distasteful outing with a hefty amount of headscratching oddness and the tone shifts seem to compliment it more than they logically should.  It is difficult to tell if Hideaki Itō's character is accidentally poorly written or deliberately poorly written.  Very curious moments like him fantasizing about having an American serial killer partner, (who also shows up as an eyeball in a shotgun), Odin's ravens, and the song "Mack the Knife" keep Lesson of the Evil from becoming an uninspired slasher movie, even if all the wacky details do not amount to having much meaning.  The combination of alarming subject matter, blunt violence, and seemingly irrelevant strangeness seems to be kept at a consistent boil where nothing comes off as too incompetent to crash everything down.

LOVELY MOLLY
Dir - Eduardo Sánchez
Overall: GREAT

In the last decade or so, a small number of filmmakers have upped their game and taken familiar source material and gone above and beyond in tweaking the formula more than enough to be worth one's time.  In addition to this, it is incredibly rewarding in a genre that needs more fresh juice than any that some of these films end up being rather frightening because of it.  Which at its core is ultimately the goal of any horror film; to actually be rather frightening  There is a lone jump scare in Lovely Molly and one may question a logical move here or there, but even horror movie cynicism cannot deny that everything else presented more than makes up for it.  Eduardo Sánchez of course was half of The Blair Witch Project's creative team and though his film output has been small compared to others, it is better to have a single movie like Lovely Molly emerge thirteen years later than a barrage of forgettable ones.  Speaking of Blair Witch, there are parts of the found footage formula on display here, but thankfully Sánchez does not rely on them, getting away with their inclusion by letting his characters put the camera down and then having conventional, handheld cinematography take back over.  These are mere stylistic details though.  The story is genuinely disturbed and it slowly escalates to a practically perfect ending, with excellent performances front to back.  This movie essentially shows that you can take a handful of commonplace horror ingredients and exquisitely reward the viewer's intelligence and patience while likewise creeping them out.

FOUND.
Dir - Scott Schirmer
Overall: WOOF

Making a movie that looks like it was shot on video with non-actors and no budget is one of those unfortunate facts of minimal filmmaking that sometimes there is just no way around.  Scott Schirmer has made a handful of independent horror movies in the same vein as found. and he deserves credit with doing the best with what he has got.  Technical aspects this noticeable though are quite an uphill problem to gloss over, especially when people with youtube accounts are making videos on their phones that are edited, acted, and more dazzling to look at than this.  There are other problems here besides budgetary ones though.  Essentially it is an exaggerated story about being picked on and fighting back when you are a kid.  Well kind of because it is also about having a schizophrenic brother, asks the question as to whether or not having dark interests will in turn make a dark human, and also racism very, very randomly.  So it is really a messy effort that tries to tackle on far too many things for its exceptionally modest budget.  Schirmer plays the entire film very straight which on paper is a good move, but it also makes several of its themes impossible to buy into when again, it comes off far more as a student film than a "real movie".