The Talking Crow - Chicks From the Underworld Suck

Rating: 5 out of 6 Crows - Fan-tastic (excellent, but for a few small flaws which can be overlooked).

A daily peruse through my favorite local obscure movie joint in Portland, Maine with fellow site contributor Lara Slowly (in town from Iowa) yielded a surprise gem in the genre of Asian horror film this past weekend. It was a chance decision that had us bypass the artsy Italian suspense DVD and look beyond the overgrown Samurai meets Yakuza meets zombie fare that is our typical standard.

This time we instead focused in on a plain blue-tinged cover that read simply: Marebito, with normal indecipherable Japanese figures hovering above and below the name (what I wouldn’t give to be able to read/speak/even remotely understand Japanese). Under this name was the figure of a small woman with a chain near her leg. The back danced around the plot giving scant clues about a fear-obsessed cameraman who finds a young girl after crossing through a portal to the underworld below Tokyo. But is she a girl… or is she something more? Typical movie ‘watch-me’ lingo, but we bit. And what an excellent chance bite this turned out to be.

Marebito - Japanese for creepy subtexts apparently...

Marebito is a film which ended up almost literally embodying everything that stands out about Japanese horror. Our story begins with the aforementioned cameraman, Masuoka, who we learn very early on has a unique obsession with fear. He seems to lust after it in an almost sexual way, eager to experience the horror he witnesses his news subjects facing on a daily basis. Right from the get-go though, Masuoka is built for us as a man with issues. Where a western film would go out of its way to present you with a protagonist you could easily identify with, here we instead gain kinship with an individual who sits up night after night staring into a desk set up with at least six computer monitors. Continuously searching, yearning desperately, to discover the ultimate source of fear and terror; a fear voyeur.

Yeah... this guy's weird. Trust me.

It is through these searches that he stumbles upon a man who commits suicide in a most gruesome way in the bowels of the Tokyo subway, surrounded by police and the lone cameraman Masuoka. This man is oblivious to all. Yet on his face, a look of ultimate terror which our protagonist replays over and over until he has an epiphany: to experience the ultimate terror as our suicidal man did, he must follow in his footsteps and see what he saw. A journey into the depths of the subway leads him into the deep caverns beneath the city of Tokyo. Further travels push him beyond what would be considered normal underground caverns, and into what is more or less billed to be the ‘underworld,’ although less in a hellish sense and more like the filmmaker bought into the old hollow-earth theory.

In either event, here we meet ‘F’, a young girl who neither eats nor speaks. (Slowly says: “I think F stands for Freud in this case. The psychosexual overtones scream his legacy!”) She appears, with the exception of some vampire-like fangs, to be normal. Well, besides the fact that she was dragged out of the deep earth (oh, and was found naked chained in a little niche in the wall, but hey – it is Japan we’re talking about here). Masuoka brings the girl back to his tiny, monitor-filled apartment and attempts to nurse her back to some semblance of health. But as time goes on, you start to wonder about the motivations for this. Is the girl ever brought to a shelter or hospital? Of course not. Our protagonist is not necessarily a hero by any means. And as time goes on, we are given more and more reasons to generally conclude he’s not a terribly moral individual.

I won’t spoil the major plot points, but a lot happens in the ensuing second and third acts of the film. We are given ample reason to begin to doubt Masuoka’s sanity for one, as well as get a glimpse into a possible sexual deviance depending on whether or not the events are real or imagined. This is enhanced not only by some bizarre twists in the story which jump out of the sidelines at some most unexpected moments, but also by some sparsely used digital effects which blur the screen as if we’re viewing the movie on a channel that doesn’t quite want to come in clear the entire time.

Along with these sanity-questioning nods though, enough happens around our protagonist to give serious doubt as to whether he really is a victim of some supernatural freakiness or not. A menacing, ominous man who threatens him as much with his presence as his words; the ‘subway suicide man’ showing back up as a cryptic underworld guide; and a mildly predictable but well handled twist on our young F’s appetite which pushes Masuoka more toward a Seymour/Audrey relationship with her rather than the perverted father figure we glimpse at first. And the cherry on top is some undertones in the sparse dialogue regarding humans as being devolved versions of our ancestors. Good stuff.

...And here is where we really begin to get pretty frakin disturbing.

The director, Takashi Shimizu of Ju-on (the original Japanese The Grudge) fame, shot the movie in only eight days in between production dates for Ju-on and the American remake. And yet, like many true masters’ side projects, it is here that Shimizu’s real genius seems to shine. The convincing performances he coaxes out of his actors, in particular the memorable character of F who manages to gain a spectacular identity for herself with little to no dialogue whatsoever, are the hallmark of an excellent director.

Marebito is, hands down, definitely a well done and frightening film. Despite my best efforts to appear manly in front the esteemed Ms. Slowly, I admit to jumping several times which I largely attribute to the masterful pacing of the film. Although heavy visual effect and action junkies might find it slow, a true film lover will be riveted to their seat. (Slowly says, “Like a striptease!”) It’s the type of movie that has just the right amount of fantastical scenes and just barely enough special effects to convince you that it’s really happening somewhere. And… who knows… maybe it really is. Happy viewing.