Kairo (2001)

Directed by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

When there's no more room for ghosts in the next world, the living will start commiting suicides and turning into black spots on walls, at least that's what Kiyoshi Kurosawa tells us in this slow, atmospheric and frustratingly complicated film. The main problem with this movie is that it doesn't go for the cheap jump scares and shameless exploitation of long-haired ghosts (though it does have some of that), but instead tries to make a clever statement about human loneliness and how modern technology is separating us and crap like that. It also has some features of an arthouse film, like when you have absolutely no idea what the hell is happening and why is everyone doing whatever the hell they're doing.

 

The story begins with a suicide of some guy. But, not only did he kill himself, he also turned into a black spot on the wall. At the same time, some other guy stumbles upon a scary website that promises their visitors interaction with the dead (!). At the same time, there's a scary mysterious room that harbours a horrifying secret. Some friends try to investigate what's going on, but they can do little to prevent the bizarre series of suicides that threatens to make the entire world (or at least Japan) look like Pripyat, Ukraine.

 

I found this movie incredibly difficult to follow. I don't know whether the problem was with the subtitles, or the director in most scenes didn't try too hard to establish the location, or I'm just stupid - anyway, I had mostly no idea who these people were and where did this all take place. And it's all so sloooooooooooooow and sloooooooooooooow and it's bearable for the first half an hour because there's an occasional scare here and there (like the first visit to the Forbidden Room, that one was spine-chilling) and you still have hope that things will actually resolve or something. However, from there on, it just seemed to me that Kurosawa was making some kind of style exercise, for himself rather than for the audience and I almost completely lost interest.

The last part of the movie has some nice apocalyptic images and this is the first movie I've seen that combines a J-horror with an actual apocalypse in such a direct way. It's a great idea, but I would've preferred it to be realized in a more conventional story. I'm not saying this movie was bad, of course. It was just a bit too hermetic for my taste, but if you like the films of, say, David Lynch, by all means I recommend you give it a try.

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

Directed by: Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Yoshihiro Nishimura

Writers: Shungicu Ushida (manga), Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Yoshihiro Nishimura has been one of my favorite directors ever since I saw the wonderful Tokyo Gore Police. I definitely prefer him to his colleague Noboru Iguchi, who (with the exception of The Machine Girl, which I loved) reaches for vulgar toilet humor too often, and besides, in my opinion, he harbours a bit unhealthy obsession with human ass.

 

Strictly speaking, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is primarily a Naoyuki Tomomatsu movie, but Nishimura is credited as a co-director and he also did the special effects, so he had a huge influence on the visual side of the movie, if not for the story. Speaking of Tomomatsu, his name wasn't familiar to me before, but after this movie I'll give him a chance, though titles like Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead and Eating Schoolgirls don't promise something that would be my cup of tea.

 

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is a successful J-sploitation splatterfest, which works simply because it's so damn entertaining. If you've seen any of Nishimura's films, you'll promptly find yourself on familiar ground when some cheerful pop music starts to play while fountains of blood flow and severed body parts fly around in slow-motion.

 

Basically, it's a story of a high-school love triangle, where a poor young boy called Jyugon is sandwiched between Keiko, the vice principal's daughter and (I guess) the most popular girl at school, and Monami, an extremely cute newcomer with mysterious background, with both of them wanting him to be their boyfriend forever. So, why the hell did I just call him "poor"? Well, for one, Monami is a vampire and wants to turn him into one, and Keiko is a bitch, at least at the beginning. Then she dies, is revived by her father (who, in his free time, is an insane Dr. Frankenstein wannabe) and turned into a horrifying cut-and-paste monster made of body parts stolen from different people. And she's still a bitch! Jyugon chooses the lesser of two evils, so he and Monami are forced to fight the disturbingly enhanced Keiko and her mad father throughout the rest of the movie.

 

As with other similar films, the plot is just there to serve as an excuse (heh, like we would need one) for hilarious over-the-top violence, body parts abuse and colourful characters which never get boring. To list everything would be impossible (not to mention undesirable), but some of the highlights are a wrist cut competition, a club of black wannabe girls (this alone in America would probably put the author in jail for a long time due to racism), vice principal who dresses like a witch doctor, inventive body part combinations (a severed arm used as a propeller, eyeballs instead of nipples, to mention just a few trivial examples) and of course endless mutilations whose crowd pleasing potential is immense.

 

It's recommended to see this in the company of your male friends, especially if you can pair it with a similar but longer film, like Nishimura's Helldriver. You can also play it to your girlfriend if you want to get dumped quickly. Whatever you do, don't miss it.

Matango (1963)

Directed by: Ishirô Honda

Writers: Takeshi Kimura, Shinichi Hoshi, Masami Fukushima, William Hope Hodgson (story “The Voice in the Night”)

 

Now I’m going to spoil this movie for you, so if you plan to see it for the first time (which I seriously DON’T recommend), then get lost. Spoilers starting from the next paragraph.

OK, then: Some Japanese people find themselves on a mysterious island after a shipwreck or something and they turn into mushrooms. End. Not much of a story, as you can see, but the bigger problem is that the movie hardly contains much of anything. First we are treated with a really long and boring boat sequence where we get introduced to a bunch of completely uninteresting characters, followed by a really long and boring sequence of island exploring, where we find out that something is very very wrong there. After that, there’s a really long and boring obligatory sequence where those unmemorable characters fight each other for some reason and then, finally, there’s a short (but equally boring) part where they turn into mushrooms.

This kind of body horror could have a great potential, but this movie is never scary or disturbing. If anything, it’s just psychedelic (particularly near the end). If you’re going to turn into mushroom, you have to have your body slowly disfigured over time, with numerous disturbing discoveries (“Hey, what is this stem doing over my left eye? Haven’t noticed it before!”), but in this movie we just notice that people occasionally go missing and later see some really large mushrooms (or, rather, collections of mushrooms) and we have to conclude it’s them. Well, screw that! Someone should hire Yoshihiro Nishimura to remake this.