2000s Asian Horror Part Nineteen

PAPRIKA

(2006)

Dir - Satoshi Kon

Overall: GOOD

Emerging nine years later yet serving as a thematic cousin to his debut Perfect Blue, Paprika is another stellar exploration of mind-bending reality from filmmaker Satoshi Kon.  His final theatrical work to be completed before his untimely death four years later from prostate cancer, Kon's adaptation of Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel is more condensed yet still fiercely committed to depicting an expanding dreamscape that gradually enters into the real world.  The idea of sci-fi technology allowing for people to record and study dreams is nothing new in fiction, but the animated form here affords Kon and his expert team of illustrators the chance to go hog-wild with captivating visuals, tripping out an already challenging story that explores duality and the nature of our fantasy realms.  It is no accident that the "real world" is increasingly depicted in a way that is indistinguishable from the "dream world" as character's improbable anatomy with each other is already established early on, making everyone's later transformation into god-like giants, kaiju-styled robots, and cinematic alter egos just as distorted.  It opens more doors than it conventionally closes, but it is a captivating ride that bares future viewings to try and unlock.

 

APARTMENT 1303

(2007)

Dir - Ataru Oikawa

Overall: MEH

Filmmaker Ataru Oikawa stuck with more J-horror immediately following his back-to-back Tomie installments, (Tomie: Beginning and Tomie: Revenge, respectively), with author Kei Ōishi's adaptation Apartment 1303; a movie that immediately brings to mind Hideo Nakata's Dark Water from five years earlier.  Yet another haunted high-rise is on display, this one being a luxury complex with a clean, functional pool for victims to continuously fall into under dubious circumstances that apparently no police force member has been curious enough to do anything about until now.  Oikawa mostly sticks with a slow boil atmosphere, letting large portions go by with no incidental music which wonderfully showcase a fine performance from Noriko Nakagoshi who is stuck grieving her dead sister, uncovering said sister's "suicide", and also being traumatized by her even more grief-stricken mother who openly despises her.  Some of the freaky bits are effective, but the story relies on too many familiar scare tactics and tropes to continually impress, plus it overstays its welcome and could afford a trimmed running time.

THE SHOCK LABYRINTH

(2009)

Dir - Takashi Shimizu

Overall: MEH

For his follow-up to the second American popcorn installment in the Ju-On series with The Grudge 2, director Takashi Shimizu chose to shoot and set a slow-burn, topsy-turvy nightmare at Fuji-Q High Land's "Labyrinth of Horrors" haunted house attraction.  The decision was also made to make the resulting The Shock Labyrinth, (Senritsu meikyû 3D), a 3-D experience, one whose poor CGI effects are more distracting than unsettling.  More of an issue though is the movie's cumbersome pacing and lack of narrative agency.  Things begin ambiguous enough and the hook of a long lost friend showing up ten years later to get the story moving is intriguing only to a point as things eventually get stuck in the mud with the small crop of characters bouncing between both time lines and supernaturally arbitrary realities.  The presentation is appropriately full of creepy window dressing; floating stuffed bunnies, ghostly children, twitchy mannequins that look straight out of Silent Hill, plus endless corridors and barren rooms that seem as if evil entities have been lurking in the shadows there for decades.  It becomes a chore to sit through though, painfully monotonous with plot revelations coming too far and few between, as well as being too murky when they do arrive.

2000s Asian Horror Part Eighteen - (Ahn Byeong-ki Edition)

NIGHTMARE

(2000)

Overall: MEH

 

The ole "accidentally murdered outcast back for revenge" concept serves as the basis for South Korean filmmaker Ahn Byeong-ki's full-length debut Nightmare, (Gawi, Scissors, Horror Game Movie, Gawi: The Nightmare).  Elements of American blockbusters like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer make their way into the story where an attractive group of young adults cover up a wrong that they committed, only for it to supernaturally bite them in the ass two years later.  Each of the characters have their own quirks, (one is a baseball player, one a lawyer, one an aspiring filmmaker, etc), and they also react differently to their newfound paranormal slasher problem with some of them suffering more guilt-ridden mental breakdowns while others aggressively lash out in denial.  The twist might be refreshing to some while disappointingly schlocky to others, but it is in keeping with the early 2000s styled tone from similar movies, which is further enhanced by an industrial/nu metal soundtrack.  Speaking of redundant, Ahn later remade it virtually shot-for-shot thirteen years later as the second entry in his Bunshinsiba trilogy.

 

PHONE

(2002)

Overall: MEH

 

South Korean filmmaker Ahn Byeong-ki jumps on the technological J-horror train with the aptly titled Phone, (Pon, The Phone), which is schlocky and derivative enough of the movies that it is clearly stylized after to please such fans.  As one could properly surmise, the electronic devise in question that is host to supernatural activity is a cell phone with a cursed number, but to Ahn and co-screenwriter Lee Yu-jin's credit, they also toss in possession, stalker, and infidelity thriller motifs to differentiate it from just another carbon-copy of Ringu.  Unfortunately, this is the very thing that over-stuffs the narrative and makes the movie feel its one-hundred and three minute length.  Otherwise, it sticks to the formula with blue-filtered night scenes, loud noises accompanying every rapid-fire scare, an adorable kid acting all evil while making angry faces and using profanity, plus a persistent musical score that could fit just as easily in any other film of its kind.  Though bloated with cliches and melodrama, it is not done so offensively and is no worse, (or better), than one would expect.

APT

(2006)

Overall: MEH

This adaptation of Kang Full's webtoon APT, (here also cinematically released under the titles Apateu and 9:56), is another by-the-books supernatural entry for filmmaker Ahn Byeong-ki.  The writer/director/producer keeps his spooky, serious tone in check with zero humor and his steadfast insistence on bathing most scenes in a blue filter and persistent scary music that usually only turns off when a mild jump scare is just around the corner.  Unfortunately the narrative tactics are equally as pot-boiler as we are introduced to yet another twitchy, black-haired, face-covered female spectre out for vengeance.  Even if Kang's source material provides an occasionally intriguing mystery involving the hook of an entire apartment building's electrical wiring going all haywire at a specific time in the evening which results in numerous alleged suicides, the movie follows all of the appropriate motions in exploring this, without a single attempt made at distinguishing it from the herd.  Ahn certainly knows and adheres to the poprcorn, J-horror formula, so fans of such films who want to see the South Korean carbon-copy will have no surprises here.

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.

Japanese Ju-on Series Part Two

JU-ON: THE GRUDGE 2

(2003)

Dir - Takashi Shimizu

Overall: MEH

More of the same except the same, Ju-on: The Grudge 2 would end up being the last Japanese installment of the franchise from its creator Takashi Shimizu, who would immediately cross the Pacific to helm the first two American remakes as well.  Still told out of order, still revolving around the same contemporary haunted abode, still featuring the long-haired/creaky-noised/mascara and blood-covered female specter, still featuring the pale blue boy specter in his underwear, and still a rinse and repeat series of spooky set pieces, the effects of such a structure inevitably wear thin with what is now the forth time around.  By changing so little, an air of redundancy reigns paramount since there is no mystery to solve and no further supernatural details either necessary or delivered that expand on what is purposely a simple vengeful spirit story whose singular goal is to go for balls-out creepiness.  In this respect though, Shimizu is still skilled enough to make the gradual pace and relentlessly dread-fueled tone work to his favor, crafting some moments that should cause goosebumps to appear for anyone new to the series.  For the rest of us though, there is nothing new to see here.

JU-ON: WHITE GHOST

(2009)

Dir - Ryuta Miyake

Overall: MEH

Some new blood and new narratives were taken after a several year break in Japan at least for the next two, simultaneous installments in the Ju-on series which were released simultaneously to mark the franchise's tenth anniversary.  First up is writer/director Ryuta Miyake's Ju-on: White Ghost, which like its companion film Ju-on: Black Ghost, clocks in at just sixty minutes and features a whole new setting and backstory around the rageful specters that curse everyone who interacts with them.  Though the Toshio Saeki ghost boy makes a cameo here, (awkwardly since it is played for laughs and arrives immediately after a scene that directly implies child molestation, yuck), the reoccurring granny spirit is a ridiculous-looking old crone who is wearing the slasher killer mask from Richard Ciupka's 1983 movie Curtains and likes to play with a basketball for no reason.  Miyake had plenty of horror experience on the small screen before this, which makes him ideally suited to work within the low-budget, minimalist mode that hearkens back to Shimizu's first two SOV installments that kick-started the whole shebang.  Still, the results are more goofy than creepy and there have been a plethora of imitators that have come in the decade since the first Ju-on: The Curse, making this intentional homage something that is neither unique nor necessary.

JU-ON: BLACK GHOST

(2009)

Dir - Mari Asato

Overall: MEH

The second of two anniversary films for the Ju-on franchise, Ju-on: Black Ghost, (Juon: Kuroi Shōjo), is just as formulaic as the concurrently released Ju-on: White Ghost, but if fares better due to a more inventive plot that jettisons the entire haunted house idea for an unborn fetus with a vendetta one.  While it may introduce a significant enough tweak for the series, there is still nothing here that will not be predictable to seasoned genre fans, since it simply recycles the age ole "one good twin, one bad twin" motif, only fitting into the anachronistic structure of these particular J-horror entries.  This creaky-voiced ghost is all ashy in color, yet we are never given a reason why besides simply assuming that it needed to look that way in order to justify the title.  This is made doubly head-scratching since the main focus is on the aforementioned, unbirthed sibling that causes all sorts of despair in order to take over its sister's body, prompting the usual curse shenanigans as well as resulting in a bizarre exorcism ceremony where a young girl's stomach swells up as a creepy face.  Director Mari Asato does her best within a framework that she has no choice but to adhere to and there are one or two effective jolts here or there, but most of the spooky bits arrive with an unceremonious whimper.  It seems like there was a better, singular movie lurking here instead of one that had to have a Grudge, but for what it is, it came out as well as could be hoped.

Japanese Ju-on Series Part One

JU-ON: THE CURSE

(2000)

Dir - Takashi Shimizu

Overall: GOOD

The first in about a seven-hundred deep series of Ju-On/Grudge properties, Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On: The Curse, (Juon), sets the template and delivers some chilling spookiness despite its SOV aesthetic.  Followed by Ju-On: The Curse 2 which was released the same year and spent nearly half of its running time simply re-telling the same events of this movie, Shimizu establishes the haunted Saeki home, its two pale/crackling/cat-meowing ghosts, and the disjointed narrative gimmick.  Told in six, out of sequence segments, the pacing lags behind in a few spots as the movie lingers in its eerie tone, but the still atmosphere only enhances the supernatural elements which helped solidify certain J-horror motifs that have flourished ever since.  Along with Hideo Nakata's comparatively more polished Ringu adaptation, this was the film to contemporize the age-old relentless vengeful spirit, setting it at a modern, unassuming home that can attach itself to and terrorize anyone who comes in contact with it.

JU-ON: THE CURSE 2

(2000)

Dir - Takashi Shimizu

Overall: MEH

As a stand-alone viewing experience, Ju-on: The Curse 2, (Ju-on 2), is a missed opportunity as the first thirty minutes are taken right out of its predecessor from the same year.  That leaves only about forty-odd minutes of singular material here which serves merely as a continuation of the first film since it is identical in structure and its SOV presentation.  Assuming that director Takashi Shimizu maybe had too much footage to make an agreeably-lengthed debut, (or that the production personnel thought that they could maximize profits by releasing two movies instead of one), the resulting companion piece here may be half pointless if still adequate at delivering the lo-fi chills.  The new chapters do not do anything to deepen the mythos, but they do provide a handful of spooky moments such as a ghost popping out from under a guy's chair, several of them banging on the windows of a school, one projected onto a ceiling, and a women pummeling her nagging husband with a frying pan out of nowhere, (a gag that Jennifer Beals would get to revisit in Shimizu's 2006 American remake The Grudge 2).

JU-ON: THE GRUDGE

(2002)

Dir - Takashi Shimizu

Overall: MEH

While the initial entry into the Ju-On series Ju-On: The Curse was a fun, low-budget, shot-on-digital-video experiment with an interesting, out-of-sequence presentation that manged to surpass its technical and narrative limitations with a consistently eerie mood, the third installment in as many years Ju-on: The Grudge sees writer/director Takashi Shimizu just recycling the exact same structure with little if anything new added to the proceedings.  Everyone we meet is doomed and the death rattle-croaking, bent over, wide-eyed and pale Saeki specters still primarily hang out in the same attic and climb down the same stet of stairs on all fours while people collapse and wait for them to easily catch up.  The movie is so identical to the proceeding ones as to qualify as a remake, giving it an air of pointlessness that is unfortunate.  On the other hand though, this is the first in the series to benefit visually from an actual budget, so for anyone who is taken out of the proceedings of the first two installments due to both of them being SOV movies, this is a better place to start.

The Tomie Series Part Three

TOMIE: REVENGE

(2005)

Dir - Ataru Oikawa

Overall: MEH

 

Initial director Ataru Oikawa returned to the Tomie series with the one-two punch of Tomie: Beginning and Tomie: Revenge, both of which were released in 2005.  An adaptation of the fifth chapter of Junji Ito's manga of the same name, this is not the first to be shot on video, yet Oikawa manages to suspend murky cinematography disbelief enough due to the eerie tone which alludes to a more unsettling chain of events than what actually transpires.  The title succubus, (this time played by Anri Ban), actually takes a backseat here, remaining off screen almost entirely until the final act.  This is a curious choice as the movie only runs seventy-one minutes, leaving the bulk of the proceedings to focus on a carefree woman with amnesia and her female doctor whose growing fondness for each other borders on lesbianism.  Tomie herself holds up in a remote cabin in the woods where she kills time with her usual shtick of pitting spellbound men against each other and her victims succumb to cannibalism on top of their usual violent devotion to her.  Such gore sequences are inconsistent though as some are graphically nasty and at other times, they do not even bother to utilize any squibs or convincing CGI blood splatter when Tomie gets several slugs emptied inside of her from close-range shotgun blasts.

TOMIE VS TOMIE

(2007)

Dir - Tomohiro Kubo

Overall: MEH

An adaptation of the chapter "The Gathering" from the third volume of Junji Ito's source material, Tomie vs Tomie is the to-date penultimate entry in the series, doubling as the second directorial effort from Tomohiro Kubo, (who worked second unit on Tomie: Forbidden Fruit).  Still done in the franchise's slow-boil, low-stakes mood, this particular installment features two title characters as the title would promise, plus people being set on fire, a shrine for a dead girlfriend, and mannequins.  Yū Abiru and Emiko Matsuoka play the genetically engineered Tomies whose physical forms are deteriorating, hence their particular agenda to be reborn inside of the body of one of their male subordinates.  As far as a showdown between them is concerned, it is hardly a balls-out brawl, nor does it conclude the proceedings as a good twenty-plus minutes follows one of their demises by gasoline and lighter.  For English speaking viewers, unfortunately the only available version seems to be from a Malaysian DVD whose subtitles may very well qualify as the most hilariously unintelligible that any foreign film has ever had.  Who knew that "Tomie" literally translates to "Rich River"?

 

TOMIE: UNLIMITED

(2011)

Dir - Noboru Iguchi

Overall: MEH

As is often the case with horror franchises, the reboot ended up being the nail in the coffin, (at least so far), for the Tomie series, with Tomie: Unlimited at once revamping and closing the book on the last nine installments.  This one brings in porn/gore filmmaker Noboru Iguchi, has a slicker production, less of an ethereal tone, and plenty of terrible CGI and laugh-out-loud body horror sequences.  Severed heads are a major component to the ridiculous visuals with caterpillar creatures made up of them, talking tumors growing on shoulders, Miu Nakamura's giant head talking through a doorway, a bunch of them with wiggling tongues in a lunch box, and also her severed head with entrails hanging off of it Leyak-style.  This is also not directly based on any volumes in Junji Ito's mangas, instead sticking to the steadfast theme of obsession turning ugly and the title character manifesting itself like a plague.  In this way, it serves as the ultimate Tomie movie; one that slams home the concept that she can never die and will only continue to sprout new life through her victims, presumably taking over the populous in the meantime.  To what end is never explained, but that has never been the agenda to such films as they always focus on the life-ruining consequences of particular individuals, this time being a family whose accidentally killed daughter is resurrected as the malevolent, cackling succubus.