PRAYER BEADS (2004)

 aka OMOINOTAMA

Director:

Masahiro Okano, Shigehito Kawata, Naoki Kusumoto, Toshikatsu Kubo

Cast: Joe Odagiri, Naota Takenaka, Masa Endo, Masaya Kato

Running Time:

4H 30

GHOUL RATING:

**(*)

3-

Story: PRAYER BEADS is a nine-episode horror series. Each 30 minute episode stands on its own (in spite of a lame attempt to tie them all together in the last one), and each will be dealt with separately.

Review:
EPISODE ONE: PRAYER BEADS (director/writer Masahiro Okano)

A pregnant woman, a psychologically unhinged friend and her missing husband, apparitions in their darkened apartment, mysterious connections between them all and the culminating zombie revenge are elements of this concoction.

I've always hated the phrase 'not bad for its kind', but it just sums up this episode perfectly: while not original or deep in any way, at least it tries to be as scary as possible with its limited means and déjà vu elements, and ends up as one of the creepiest episodes of this series.

EPISODE TWO: VENDING MACHINE WOMAN (director/writer Shigehito Kawata)

This is what happens when a young pair goes on a vacation unprepared: not only have they not checked on the place in advance, but even worse, they're going there with no soft drinks whatsoever. So, when the girl is thirsty in the middle of the night, her beau has no alternative but to go to a creepy shack several miles down the road through the woods, and take a few cans of queasy juice from a wending machine nearby. The effects of this juice, however, lead to a wonderfully extravagant conclusion.

This is a favorite episode among many, and I can see why: the isolated setting is creepy, and the outré ending is reminiscent of some crazy stories of early Stephen King, where weirdness awaits you just off the beaten path, with no rhyme or reason. It also features the series' most elaborate physical effect: it is a bit on the cheap, rubbery side, but is still quite effective in its merging of the organic and mechanic, sort of like a poor man's David Cronenberg meets a poor man's Screaming Mad George.

EPISODE THREE: IT’S ME (director Naoki Kusumoto)

Young thugs intend to extort some money from an old lady. But, in Japanese horrors, old ladies are not to be fooled with! Besides, who is observing the criminal behind the closet door?

For my money, this was an endurance test, a bore-fest with a predictable twist not worth waiting for.

EPISODE FOUR: REAL (director Masahiro Okano)

A respected surgeon (Masayo Kato, from GOZU, AGITATOR, SAMURAI RESURRECTION…) suffers from headaches which make him untrustworthy and unbalanced in the middle of an operation. So, this man of science goes to a comic-book-creepy guy who wears a cloak and hides his face even in his living room, and accepts a mysterious "cure" with a side-effect or two. That's when he really enters the world of pain…

I have a weak spot for downward-spiral LSD-trips, so this portrait of a madman as a young surgeon had its moments (i.e. his visions), but was mostly dull and uninvolving in the remaining part, and lacks a real punch.

EPISODE FIVE: MUSHROOM HUNTING (director/writer Masahiro Okano)

An otaku boy meets a nice girl meets a date-rape jock over the internet. What do they do on their first encounter in real life? Why, they go to the woods for some mushroom hunting, of course. And what do they do when a comic-book-creepy guy (cloak, rags, hidden face and all) warns them not to proceed any further, or at least not to enter a witch's cabin? Well, of course they continue until they come to a cabin where a creepy old woman offers some nice mushroom soup. They were asking for it!

Other than being completely silly, unbelievable and trashy, this episode is quite passable. The acting is somewhat better than the usual (low) standards of this series, while mushrooms grown from human bodies are always a nice thing to see. 

EPISODE SIX: EDDIE (director Toshikatsu Kubo)

It begins like a precursor of Korean THE HOST: in a river, under the bridge, there is a creature, and a bunch of spectators (and even a TV crew) are crowded on the bank. However, the said creature is a cute, seal-like thingee with those big sad-puppy eyes. How could it be dangerous? And what's a little telekinetic boy doing there?

You can never go wrong with giant vagina-monsters, and this episode proves this time-worn truth once again. OK, they are CGI, and rather poor CGI at that, but hell, it's giant vagina-monsters anyway, rampaging on the river bank and exploding all over the place. What else could you possibly want from your entertainment? Perhaps more money and physical creature effects instead of CGI, but… beggars can't be choosers!

EPISODE SEVEN: ECHOES (director/writer Naoki Kusumoto)

An old man and his wife exert a revenge on the men responsible for abducting their grand-daughter and selling her to the hospital for body parts. Is this a subtle satire on the underbelly of Japanese health-care system, unrivalled even by Michael Moore's SICKO, or just an excuse for some cheap CGI body-damage effects? You decide!

Once again, I wish they went with practical effects instead of (very poor) CGI! I mean, come on, guys, it's XXI century, and if you cannot make Joe Odagiri (BUGMASTER, SHINOBI, BLACK KISS, AZUMI) explode better than John Cassavetes did full three decades ago, in de Palma's THE FURY, you should bow your heads in shame! The story is dull and unconvincing on too many levels, even for this kind of Tales from the Crypt scenario.

EPISODE EIGHT: CAT’S PAW (director/writer Masahiro Okano)

A bullied boy (is there any other kind, except for bullies?) receives an unexpected help from an internet portal and a fuzzy cat-like creature through anime enactments of his three wishes.

Stylistically different at least in the sense that half of its running time is actually animated, this is a variation of the classic 'be careful what you wish for…' story, W.W. Jacobs' MONKEY'S PAW. We've seen millions of variations on the theme, including one on THE SIMPSONS, so why not an anime one?

EPISODE NINE: APARTMENT (director Masahiro Okano)

What starts as a grueling family dinner from Hell ends up as a mess of a very different and silly kind.

There are two completely disjointed halves here: in the first one, a psychotic father torments his wife and two kids; in the second one Mr. Okano tries to include visual references to all previous episodes, regardless of the fact that none of that makes any sense, and so 'wraps up' this series in a haphazard way.

All in all, PRAYER BEADS is a decent, though not too inspired attempt to make a Japanese version of TALES FROM THE CRYPT (without the Crypt Keeper foolishness). It means it's trashy, cheap, clichéd, unconvincing and mostly dull, over-reliant on special effects (Masahiro Okano's real profession), with occasional flashes of inspiration scattered here and there. It is very low on atmosphere, mood and scares; when it attempts something of the kind, it ends up being silly, comic-book-like in the worst, most dated sense (think EC comics of the '50s as the paragon). Obviously shot on video, its visuals are workmanlike, bland, often banal or downright ugly, more appropriate for the SCHOOLGIRL IN CEMENT kind of snuff-like horrors than to something that's supposed to be scary. Nevertheless, there's quite enough for undiscriminating viewers to enjoy here, so if you feel like some low-brow horror fun for the whole family, go for it!

PRAY (2006)

Country: Japan

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 1H 17M

Director:

Yuichi Sato

Cast:

Tetsuji Tamayama, Sanae Miyata, Asami Mizukawa...

GHOUL'S RATING:

*(*) (2-)

 

Story: Two twenty-something kidnappers take their prey (a tiny and very unscary little girl) to an abandoned school. When they call the girl's parents, they're told that their only daughter died a year ago. In the meanwhile, the girl  disappears, and the desperate amateurs must chase her down the endless corridors. Later on three more of their friends appear so that there would be some more 'cannon fodder' for the ghostly kills... In the abandoned school no one can hear you pray...

Review: PRAY attempts to be different. PRAY wants to be a ghost flick with a difference. PRAY believes in the audience's eternal desire for twists. Alas! The stress is on 'attempts', 'wants' and 'believes'. The end result, however, is yet another lackluster attempt to cash in on the J-horror ghost craze.

Oh, yeah, it is different in the sense that the characters are not chased by ghosts in their apartments but in a deserted school. Is anything gained by this environment? Not really. This particular school is a far cry from the really creepy one in HAUNTED SCHOOL 4 (a very well made little horror that I strongly recommend over this one!). The building and its interiors are mind-numbingly mundane and utterly devoid of creepiness that more accomplished directors, like Shinya Tsukamoto or Shimako Sato, were able to invest in their spooky schools in HIRUKO THE GOBLIN and EKO EKO AZARAK, respectively. The cheap direct-to-video shots deliver a boring murky setting with no deep shadows or inventive stylization. There is neither atmosphere nor eye-candy, just plain boring building that the characters roam through endlessly.

 

And yes, they attempt to 'surprise' you with some twists here. There is even a blurb on the back cover of this DVD which says: 'A ghost story with a twist... followed by another. And another...' After watching the film itself, I was reminded of that old joke, when a reviewer says something like: 'This film is incredible in its stupidity! It's amazing that anyone could watch more than 15 minutes of this nonsense!' and then they make a blurb which says: 'This film is incredible ...! It's amazing!' Well, something like that happens here. Yes, there is a twist after a twist here, but the fact that they are piled one after another is not necessarily a good thing. As all great films with a twist or two in them have demonstrated, twists are effective only in stories with characters to care about. And there's nothing remotely like that in this flick.  In PRAY, the twists are merely a lazy device, mechanical and ultimately self-demeaning. After an hour-long boredom of watching some dispensable ciphers run around the corridors you just won't care.

 

To sum up: no characters; no story; no suspense; no atmosphere; no real frights; no gore to talk about; no inventive kills; no eye candy; no memorable set-pieces... Why should anyone bother? To 'enjoy' the drab environment of an abandoned school in which all the inventory is somehow still there? To discover that a person can be 'killed' by merely cutting his hand off? How's that for an inventive (or physiologically, medically correct) kill? To be surprised by the 'couldn't care less' twists? Why, really? I cannot recommend this quickie to anyone but the most die-hard completists of Japanese horror. Everyone else should pray for the release of something worthier.

TOMIE: REBIRTH (2001)

Country: Japan
Running Time: 101'
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Cast:
Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Kumiko Endou, Masaya Kikawada

GHOUL RATING:
**(*)
2+

Story: Hideo, an art student, murders his model Tomie when she, in a fit of jealousy, slices up his portrait of her. His two friends help him bury her body in the woods. Later, however, at a party they notice a girl resembling Tomie. Right then, Hideo is found dead in the WC, with a knife in his neck held by his own hand. His friend Shunichi immediately falls for Tomie, much to chagrin of his mother. Obsession, silly acting in public, decapitation and dismemberment, crawling heads and other strange events follow.

Review:  TOMIE movies are one of the greater mysteries of contemporary horror cinema: this phenomenon should've ended with the first film, as even the original was a barely watchable exercise in boredom. While its atmosphere was occasionally fine, it lacked anything resembling character, plot, logic, sense or enough memorable set-pieces to pay off for the lack of contents generally expected in a good movie. Yet, the haphazard sequence of non-events which served as its 'plot' somehow became the source of a whole series of movies, each duller and more pointless than the previous.

'Wait a minute!' I hear you say. 'Someone actually LIKED those dull-fests enough for them to make a whole series of crappy TOMIE flicks?'
'I'm afraid so,' says I. 'And they are (almost) all available in a single pack now, courtesy of RONIN.' The series is made up of these titles: TOMIE, TOMIE: RE-PLAY, TOMIE: RE-BIRTH, TOMIE: ANOTHER FACE and  TOMIE: FINAL CHAPTER aka TOMIE: FORBIDDEN FRUIT. The one that’s missing in this package is TOMIE: REVENGE.

The mystery of this series' existence may be somewhat elucidated by the fact that it is loosely based on a very good manga by Junji Ito (UZUMAKI). In other words, many people had a reason to expect that movies adapted from a decent comic should also be good. Ah, it was not meant to be. Say goodbye to the comic's creepiness and its clever scrutiny of the highschoolers' moral dilemmas, say goodbye to its insights into the gender and sex politics of Japanese youth – say hello to a series of slow-burning, uneventful, silly, pointless, uninvolving, scare-less excuses for 'horror'.

Alexis Glass wrote a fine introduction to the work of Junji Ito. In it, he points out to one trait which cannot be stressed strongly enough: ''Junji Ito is also well known for eschewing any sort of scientific explanation for the strange events in his comics, concentrating his efforts instead on simply making the horror as visceral and disquieting as possible.''

As all fans of Japanese horror already know, American clear-cut logic and explanations are not always to be found here. Irrationality is a common 'spice' in the Oriental dish, especially in Japanese horror, with its disregard for logic and tendency towards puzzling, open endings. That's all fine and dandy. However, the TOMIE flicks push viewers' tolerance for this approach a bit too far, without ''making the horror as visceral and disquieting as possible''. There is an exchange in TOMIE: REBIRTH which I find exemplary and crucial for understanding this series:

''But why did Hitomi become Tomie?'' wonders one character.
''It does not matter,'' philosophizes another.
''I see. Tomie again,'' accepts the first one stoically.

And again, and again, and again… How or why – it does not matter. Judging on whether you find this exchange creepy, funny or just plain ridiculous you can decide whether you'll give TOMIE flicks a chance or not. Personally, if I were to choose between unkillable, ever-resurrecting baddies, I'd take Jason Vorhees any day of the week and twice on Friday. At least he works on his own dumb level, whereas Tomie does not rise to the ambition it set out to accomplish.
One TOMIE flick not yet reviewed from this collection is TOMIE: REBIRTH, and that is my sad duty. It is directed by Takashi Shimizu in a rare excursion away from his repetitive JUON/GRUDGE movies, but sadly, his creepy touch is largely absent and the flick remains another dreary piece of non-entertainment typical for this entire series.

Shimizu seems bent on boring his audience to tears with his long shots, mostly immobile camera, brooding dark-ambient music interrupted by long silences and other devices commonly found in dull artsy movies, but rarely effective in genre filmmaking, which requires some regard for pacing, rhythm, narrative-drive and structure. None of the latter can be found in this movie, which goes all over the place: without a main character, it deals with a group of barely sketched persons 'distinguished' merely by their good looks and names. There is no suspense nor drama nor horror, for who could care for those ciphers lost in a 'plot' (dis)organized by the principle of 'anything goes'?
For example: one character's mother dies unexpectedly. 'She suffered from a strange illness,' says he, apparently unmoved. When his friend comes to the wake and removes the coffin's lid, he sees the woman's face all hairy, like a werewolf's. Just then, her mouth opens and a stream of long hair flows out. A solid visual is achieved, a jump-shock provided, but then… this boy and his just-orphaned friend shrug it off and never mention it again. TOMIE: REBIRTH is full of such moments. Things... just... happen. With no inherent logic, no matter how limited of constructed.

What's even worse, Shimizu fails to create a feeling of strange events building into an oppressive sense that the whole concept of rationality is existentially undermined – something that another adaptation of Junji Ito, namely UZUMAKI by Higuchinsky, has done effortlessly. What you get instead is the feeling of the scriptwriters who thought: ''It IS crazy, but who cares?'' Lacking focus of any kind, TOMIE: REBIRTH meanders through some longeurs and a couple of memorable scenes (like the never-failing effect of Tomie's detached head, here growing a pair of limbs/tentacles) to its irrelevant, non-poignant 'who cares' ending. And that's it. The tech credits are solid enough, and there ARE duller TOMIE movies than this one, so it can be serviceable in a moment of utter desperation when you have nothing better to watch, but is there anything to recommend it on its own? No, not really.

And now, for the inevitable questions.
One: if you were to see one single TOMIE flick, which should it be? I'd recommend TOMIE: REPLAY. It's as silly as the rest, but at least it's more eventful, with quicker pace and more outrageous imagery than in others (after all, they are growing a Tomie girl in a water tank in this one!).
Two: is this collection worth your while? The answer for most 'normal' film lovers would be 'No!' It is made up of one atrocious (ANOTHER FACE), one poor (the first TOMIE), two watchable but nothing special (FORBIDDEN FRUIT and REBIRTH) and one mildly interesting (REPLAY).

DVD [NTSC, Region 1]:  Image quality of all titles in this collection is barely passable, as they are all muted and washed out, with pale colors and very poor blackness (which is mostly gray). TOMIE: REBIRTH's screen (anamorphic widescreen, 1.85: 1) is additionally cropped so that the effect is that of watching a movie taped off someone else's TV. Audio is in Japanese, 5.1 Dolby Digital, no complaints there. English subtitles are very fine. Extras include: interviews with the cast and director, storyboard-to-film comparison, a look at the special effects and trailers for the five titles in this collection.
    Extras for other movies in this set are like this: TOMIE ('making of' documentary + trailers); ANOTHER FACE (zero: this is a cheap direct-to-video flick, so nothing to add to that); REPLAY (trailers + a 'gallery' of only 4 or 5 Ito's illustrations!); FORBIDDEN FRUIT (trailers + making of).

PS UPDATE: The last addition to this interminable series, TOMIE UNLIMITED is by far the most outrageous, irrational, surreal, out-there wacky gory entertainment, so I urge you to give it a try if you're into this sort of thing. It makes NO SENSE AT ALL, but is full of crazy imagery, ambitious make up and CGI effects (pretty decent in all) and there's never a dull moment! Now, for a TOMIE film, that's a first!

ONE MISSED CALL 2 (2005)

Country: Japan

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 105'

Director:

Renpei Tsukamoto

Cast:

Mimula, Yu Yoshizawa, Asaka Seto, Renji Ishibashi 

GHOUL RATING: **(*)  3-

Story: The familiar cell-phone ring announces a different ghost in this sequel. Kyoko (Mimula) has three days to unravel the secret behind the curse, or to die trying. She is helped by her boyfriend, and a female journalist whose sister was killed by the same (or is it?) cell-phone haunting, death-foretelling ghost. Ultimately, they are led to Taiwan, to a deserted mining village where a young girl was tortured and killed in the mine, only to leave a terrible grudge behind her…

Review: The movie opens with a fine scene: it's raining, and a spooky black-haired woman, dressed in white, her face obscured by the umbrella, comes to pick up a little girl from the kindergarten. The little girl greets her teacher, and someone else next to her. But no one is standing there. She goes with the woman, leaving the teacher puzzled… Pity that none of this prologue has anything to do with ONE MISSED CALL 2. The story proper starts with a similar scene like in the original: a group of young people are sitting in a restaurant, when that well-known cell-phone melody starts again. This time, however, the film breaks one of the basic rules established in part one. The phone is left in the kitchen, and is picked up by the owner's father. He hears his daughter making a remark about leaving the oil on the stove, and then screaming. Only minutes later he will be found with half of his face literally poached in oil. All this is fine, but whatever happened with the basic rule of the phone-owner being the next victim, and warning him/herself from the future? What about the three days' period between the omen and its fulfillment?

ONE MISSED CALL 2 takes such rules pretty haphazardly: sometimes they apply, sometimes they don't. Who cares, as long as anything spooky happens, right? Well, not really. One of the many qualities of RINGU, the unattainable blue-print for most of later Asian ghost-horrors, is that it establishes its rules early in the film, and plays upon them consistently until the end, with no cheats, no forced twists and eleventh-hour's changes of plan for the sake of adding yet another superficial 'boo!' But, ONE MISSED CALL 2 is pretty far from RINGU. Hell, it's far even from Miike's ONE MISSED CALL! While many accused the Master for making a 'derivative' film, unworthy of his status of a groundbreaking, unpredictable purveyor of hilarity, frights and gruesome images, at least his ONE MISSED CALL was scary, dynamic and full of memorable images and set-pieces. The sequel by the TV helmer, Renpei Tsukamoto (not related to Shinya!), is a typical by-the-numbers retread of been-there done-that. 

 

The worst attempt at 'originality' is at the same time the most misguided step-away from the original: namely, the ghostly perpetrator of cell-phone haunting is no longer Mimiko, but some entirely new girl creature. As the story goes on, the link to the previous film, and the whole cell-phone thing, becomes increasingly tenuous so that, after the half-hour mark, it's almost entirely forgotten. The whole affair seems like one of those instances where an unrelated screenplay is forcefully made to fit a franchise by inserting random elements from it which never properly gel into a coherent whole (see the later parts of HELLRAISER series as text-book examples of this strategy).

To sum up: no Mimiko, no warnings to self from the future, no colorful death scenes (OK, there is ONE, in the bathroom, and that's it for the whole movie!), no jawbreaker candies (until the forced twist ending)… So what do we have here? A tired, worn out story of yet another investigation which leads to yet another mistreated girl who avenges from beyond the grave. Because of her scary premonitions, the villagers of her Taiwan community sewed her lips shut, and left her tied to a chair in an abandoned mine. There are at least TWO plot points here which resemble RINGU, and yes – there IS a scene in which the girl slowly, one hand at a time, creeps out from a well. Only minutes later another broken apparition crawls down the stairs for all those of you who somehow missed the JU-ON / GRUDGE series. Bo-ring! The final half-hour gives its best to achieve an over-the-top horror-action finale like in Miike's original, but fails miserably. It's just too incoherent, too 'anything goes' to make us care for any actor from the stupidly separated trio which roam the abandoned mine. Even the 'tragic-romantic' ending is half-hearted (or is it half-assed?) since the characters were never real in the first place.

Make no mistake: ONE MISSED CALL 2 is a tolerable, watchable time-waster which can be recommended for die-hard fans of J-horror. There are some moderate scares, or at least solid attempts to create them (although very few in the overlong mid-section which begs for fast-forwarding!), so indiscriminate viewers can be satisfied for the time being. But there's nothing in this particular film to stay with you and haunt you, say, a week or two later. As the time passes, all that'll remain is a ghostly blur which merges with all those other would-be-spooky Asian horrors trying to cash in on the ghost-craze. If you care for originality, good frights, and movies which respect your intelligence, this is a call you can afford to miss.

NEIGHBOR NO. 13 (2005)

Country: Japan

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 108'

Director: Yasuo Inoue

Cast:

Shun Oguri
Shido Nakamura
Hirofumi Arai
Yumi Yoshimura

GHOUL RATING: 

**(*)  3- 

Story: Juzo is an introverted boy constantly bullied at school. Akai is the leader of the pack which douses Juzo with water and burns him with acid. The scars of these treatments remain. He grows up into a fine looking young man (Shun Oguri), but no one suspects that inside he harbors another self – the one which bears the marks of inhuman acts visited upon him. It is a scarred, ugly and more muscular version of him (Shido Nakamura). This dark doppelganger is bent on vengeance. As it turns out, it is no coincidence that Juzo lives in the same tenement building as his former tormentor. Nor is it pure chance that he starts working for the construction company where Akai (Hirofumi Arai) is still up to his old bullying tricks. Akai's cute wife and a small son do not suspect anything regarding their neighbor from the apartment no. 13...

Review: NEIGHBOR NO. 13 is the kind of a movie that can be hurt by false expectations. It is marketed as a vengeance saga (after all – vengeance sells! Don't we all dream of one kind or another?). The DVD package presents it as an over-stylized action flick: you see two cool dudes, one of them sporting a bloodied samurai sword, and the dark blue wall behind them is splattered with blood. Oh, yeah! The fanboys are drooling already. Below the title, you see the magic words: 'director's cut'! 'Aha', you think, 'so there was some other, censored cut? There must be plenty of gore and nudity to be cut from here!' On the back cover you instantly recognize Takashi Miike scowling from a photo. 'Damn! Miike is in this too? This must be cool beyond words!' If you cannot read Japanese, the rest won't tell you much, since there is no English on this DVD cover, but then you go on the internet and find reviews that mention that it's based on a manga ('Hell yes!') and you also find all the talk about 'brutality', 'gore' and... yeah – 'nudity'! Your hand, with a will of its own, is already in your pockets, counting the cash.

Wait a minute.

First you must be warned of the following: I am not aware of there being any other cut of this film, but if anything *was* cut, it must be mere seconds, since there is not much explicit stuff here to begin with. The most 'shocking' thing you'll see is a close up of a big fat turd. The violence is mostly off-screen, or shot from a distance, while its aftermath –if shown at all- can be seen only in glimpses. Of course, that's a legitimate aesthetic decision – as long as you're aware of it, and do not expect something else. Something more Miike-like. Talking about whom – his cameo is the smallest 'blink-and-miss' cameo you'll ever see in your life: he is onscreen for the whole three seconds. And as for the nudity: no, the cute wife (Yumi Yoshimura) does not bare much more than a single shoulder. The only bare flesh you'll see here belongs to the boyish Shun Oguri: of course, this being an Asian film, you cannot expect full frontal (that's still a big No-no!), but you do get to see almost every other inch of his slim bod. If that's your thing – you've been warned.

OK, now that we've discussed the exploitation parts (or lack thereof), let's talk about art. After deciding that this is neither action nor horror film that the package might lead you to believe, how about drama? Is it a 'revenge saga' along the lines of Chanwook Park's vengeance trilogy? Well, not really. The revenge is utterly uninspired and takes the most predictable route. No ingenious and convoluted plans here. Nor is it emotionally searing in the way that Park's films inevitably are. Admittedly, there is some creepiness involving the bully's kid, but that's about it. (Of course, if you're on a strict diet of recent American fare, then you *will* be shocked by a lot that goes on here, but I assume that readers of this site are well versed in Asian cult cinema, and are therefore not easily shocked.) Our protagonist is reduced to a cipher and his 'struggle' with the double (the two of them fighting in a lonely cabin in the wasteland under gloomy skies) is shown in stylized imagery where visuals from the director's commercials creep in. Unfortunately, none of that makes the drama any deeper or more layered – just prettier, especially in contrast with the drab, claustrophobic environment of the tenement building which takes the bulk of the film.

The greatest fault with NEIGHBOR NO. 13, however, is its 'deliberate' pacing. The story is too simple and the characters too conventional to fill the two hours' running time, and the pace is too often too slow. Our debutant director shows signs of promise, especially in instances where he refuses to go the easy way and provide cheap thrills, but on the other hand, a story like this *requires* something more visceral – either in terms of imagery or emotions. The detached attitude (e.g. over-reliance on long, wide shots, which place the characters and events in the distance) is not the way to go; when mixed with a really uneven, stop-and-go pace (with more stopping than going) and an utterly underwhelming ending, it all boils down to a solid, if overlong exercise in nothing special, although occasional flashes of quirkiness make it more palatable. The patient viewers will certainly find some rewards in this film, but the common viewer might not be predisposed to enjoy a too-simple story unnecessarily complicated and prolonged.

DVD [NTSC, Region 2] :  The fine, but misleading package of the disc is already mentioned above: the DVD cover and the menus lack anything in English, so it may take some wandering around until you find what you want. Animated menus are good (although inappropriate for this particular film: they also try to 'sell' a cool, stylish action film – which this is not!), but of little use to English speaking viewers. When you click on 'SET UP' – all you find is a bunch of Japanese characters. Luckily, once you play the movie, the English translation is excellent and subtitles are readable. The visuals vary a lot, but that seems to be the way it was filmed: the scenes in the apartments are intentionally under lit and lacking detail, while the symbolic, stylized parts (in the cabin) are crisp and top notch. The sound (in 5.1. surround) is excellent, making a particularly good use of the brooding dark ambient score and sound design. There is also an audio commentary here, in which (at least) two Japanese talk and laugh, but there is neither explanation in the menus nor subtitle for it, so this was obviously not meant for the English speaking viewers. The bonus materials are scarce: a theatrical and TV trailer (again, misleadingly presenting the flick as a much weirder and gorier affair than it is) and cast and crew text info (only in Japanese, of course). You also get chapter selection (if that's an extra for you!) – and that's all.

SODOM THE KILLER (2004)

Country : Japan

Genre: Horror / Comedy

Running Time: 104

Producer: Kenzo Horikoshi, etc.

Director: Hiroshi Takahashi

Cast: Takashi Urai, Aki Miyata, Rena Komine, Shoko Nakahara

GHOUL RATING: 

**

2-

Story: Bad things happen when innocent blood is shed. In the early 1700s, Lord Sodom Ichibei is celebrating his wedding day when his bride-to-be suddenly vomits blood on her white gown and dies. Suspecting witchcraft, he kills his bride's two maids, but once he realizes their innocence, he becomes completely insane and kills everyone around him. 300 years later, his descendant goes through the same: one of the innocent victims is reincarnated and poisons all the guests at his wedding, while his bride dies in a similar bloody manner. This transforms Ichiro into the evil and vengeful 'Sodom the killer', a cursed man who becomes blind at the spot (except he can see cats, dogs, trees and flowers). He finds a group of minions and starts a master-plan for the world's destruction.

Review: SODOM THE KILLER seems to be a horror comedy, but it's neither funny nor scary. SODOM THE KILLER seems to be a spoof, but a spoof of what exactly? I don't know. SODOM THE KILLER seems to be intentionally bad, but does that really distinguish it (and make its watching worthwhile) from flicks that turned out bad while striving for the good? That is the key question, and on its answer depends whether you'll find it enjoyable or just plain horrible. The film opens with a relatively straight face: a typical prologue of 'how the curse started'. It becomes slightly suspicious when the bloodshed comes, and you see it shot completely bloodless, and extremely poorly staged. Once you spot the very modern pipes in an 18. century castle you realize that perhaps you're not supposed to take this seriously. OK, so far so good. But, once you see through the real intention, does that make the film any more enjoyable? Well, that's where SODOM THE KILLER lost me. 

I do not deny, some of the jokes are not too bad: for example, an evil master-plan to replace one single bag of real money with counterfeits manages to create a nation-wide inflation and is followed by a starving family massacre of the entire restaurant because they cannot pay for the meal. Also, there are plenty visual jokes which try to make the film's deficiencies into its strengths, like using an obvious dummy instead of a human stand-in for a fight scene. Later on you see a life-sized photograph of an actress glued to the back window of a car in full-speed instead of a stunt double. If that's your idea of humor, you'll laugh yourself senseless. What else do we have here? Toy aero planes instead of real (or at least CGI) ones. Dodgy rear-screen projection in several cases: in one scene, a toy-train in stop-motion is 'derailed' in a fuzzy rear-screen projection while the video-sharp shot actors react exaggeratedly in front of the screen. In another, towards the end, a character abandons the 'car' and runs off the rear-screen projection down the corridor. Numerous such winks and reminders of the medium of cinema and its conventions make this flick a solid inspiration for another of those dry academic essays on post-modern discourse in contemporary film, layers of reality and their appropriation in genre cinema, and the like. Yeah, right. But does THAT make the film any more fun? 

How hard is it to make an intentionally bad film? It's cheap, and does not even pretend that there was anything remotely resembling a budget around. Shot on digital video, it looks cheap and ugly. Its look becomes tiresome pretty soon, just like its humor, or what passes for it. The whole thing leaves a strong impression that perhaps it could be palatable only with a strong dose of alcohol or some stronger brain-addling additive, in which case the silliness might be alchemically turned into entertainment and the time might no longer be a factor. You see, a good spoof should not exceed 85 minutes, whereas this one is at least 20 minutes too long. If you watch this sober, you'll feel almost every one of those minutes taken away from you.

SODOM THE KILLER also presents one of the more blatant cases of false advertising in recent times. The DVD case shows off a dark and gloomy, possibly satanic imagery, and promises that it comes 'from the creator of RINGU'. Uh-uh, I'm creeped out already! I wish they lied about the latter. Sadly, this flick is really written and directed by Hiroshi Takahashi, the genius who wrote the screenplay for the original RINGU - but also the dumb-ass responsible for its underwhelming sequels and even for the despicable American remake-sequel, THE RING 2. Why should a man like him want to be involved with an homage to Ed Wood and Ray Dennis Steckler right now and in this manner is anyone's guess. As it stands now, I think another RINGU is required from him to annul this mediocre (at best) endeavor. 

From the above it's quite obvious that you should not expect a horror film, or anything remotely similar in quality to RINGU. No horrors, no creepiness, not even a trace of sodomy - unless the latter refers to the feelings of those innocent souls who buy or rent this DVD expecting a scary movie and end up being f***ed in the ass by a completely different, dumb creature!

FLOWERS FROM HELL: THE MODERN JAPANESE HORROR FILM

FLOWERS FROM HELL: THE MODERN JAPANESE HORROR FILM

Jim Harper

Noir Publishing, 2008.

Book review

by

Dejan Ognjanovic

The lucrative phenomenon of J-horror film has already produced several titles dealing with it. Some of them include Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, And Thailand by Patrick Galloway, Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema by Jay McRoy and J-Horror: The Definitive Guide to the Ring, The Grudge and Beyond by David Kalat. Here comes another book devoted to it. This one is about the most vital and developed of all Asian cinematographies – the grand-daddy of them all, Japanese.

            Its title is sadly reminiscent of a far superior one, Eros in Hell by Jack Hunter, the unsurpassed look into Japan's more otherworldly forays into Eros + Thanatos (pinku + horror + cyberpunk SF + avant-garde and experimental cinema), but this is an entirely different book and should not be mixed with the former. Its ambitions are explained thus: "Flowers from Hell is not an encyclopedia or a movie guide, and I have not attempted to cover in detail every RING-inspired 'vengeful spirit' movie or direct-to-video horror anthology that appeared in the '90s. The purpose of this work is to track the major themes, films and creative talents that have appeared over the past twenty to twenty-five years, so I have concentrated on films that either typify a certain trend or are in some way significant because of content, cast and crew or general quality" (from Introduction, page 9).

            The book is organized into chapters which follow this ambition, some named after themes, like "Vengeful spirits", "Demons, Monsters and Beyond", "Psychos and Serial killers" etc. while others deal with a representative author, like "Hideo Nakata and the RING Cycle", "Love and Mutation: The Works of Junji Ito on Film" and "Takashi Shimizu and the JUON Series". This makes the book rather easy to follow, although it still leaves a bit to be desired in terms of organization and clarity.

            The author decided to deal mostly with the films made from the mid-80s onwards, claiming that the development of J-horror up to that point "requires several books of its own". This leads to starting the book rather arbitrarily, and without a sufficient introduction into the trends and motifs up to the mid-80s. Very little is said, and very briefly at that, about the folklore beliefs, legends, literature and early films which are the basis of what followed. Instead, right from the very beginning of Chapter I, Mr. Harper jumps into analysis of specific films by Nobuhiko Obayashi (HOUSE and IJINTACHI TONO NATSU) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (SWEET HOME). Thus, some knowledge of the cultural and cinematic background against which J-horrors appeared is necessary for the full understanding of this book, and must be looked for elsewhere. 

            The analyses of the specific films are mostly decent, but not too profound nor elaborate: they provide the basic plot and elementary commentary on the film's qualities or lack thereof (acting, photography, pacing, plot logic, etc.) but rarely delve deeper than that. The styles or worldviews or obsessive themes of particular directors are rarely invoked, and even the connections and thematic similarities between different films are barely sketched, which makes the critiques rather simple-minded and devoted only to the most obvious. This hurts especially when one comes to the true masterpieces of J-horror, which often remain misunderstood by the author.

This is what Mr. Harper has to say on Miike's AUDITION: "Attempts have been made to read the film as a critique of patriarchal Japanese society, but in truth Miike's main intention is simply to shock the audience. This might not be a particularly noble ambition, and it's certainly something the director has tried before, but AUDITION is the most effective and successful attempt..." (page 70). Reducing this masterpiece to a mere shock-machine (albeit successful!) exemplifies the shallowness of the writer, not of the film in question. Later on, the author rightly labels BATTLE ROYALE "a milestone of contemporary cinema" but his brief and generic 'reading' of that film barely sustains such a ponderous claim. 

What, exactly, makes BR a milestone remains to be seen in some other, more ambitious study. A lengthy retelling of the film everyone has seen, Nakata's RING, is not a basis for anything deeper than the conclusion that it is, just like AUDITION, yet another film made merely to scare you, and that's it! Here goes: "RING does not attempt to carve out new territory or push the boundaries of the genre (although it did end up doing so, ironically). Its aims are much humbler: it seeks only to scare" (page 118). Even if one reduced these films to mere scare-mongering, their analyses leave a lot unsaid about HOW, exactly, these particular films work, unlike so many other which try the same, yet fail.

Jim Harper's writing is fluid and simple, easily understandable. It did require more proofreading and editing than it got, as many typos and clumsy sentences remain in the text. For example, it will take you a few pages of reading to see what, exactly, was meant by a sentence like this: "As Mima struggles to come to terms with the demands of her new career – including a graphic rape scene – others are equally unhappy with the situation..." (page 72). Lavish illustrations in black and white are spread throughout, while 32 pages in full color show-off numerous photos and film posters in the book's middle, which means that the book's text is skimpier than it appears. Although the full book has 192 pages, without photos the text would barely fill over 100. 

Therefore, Flowers from Hell may not be as thorough and detailed as some might want, but, on the other hand, those looking for a brief, simple, down-to-earth introduction to a phenomenon much more complex than here presented will be pleased by the user-friendly approach taken here. Basically, Jim Harper's writing is on the level of a slightly above-average user comment on IMDb and, as such, it can provide the basic information and elementary criticism on the J-horrors from the last 25 years. Noir Publishing did a good job with this finely printed and solidly designed book which has a greater appeal for the masses than for the smaller numbers of already initiated and devoted connoisseurs looking for something more and deeper.

KIREI: THE TERROR OF BEAUTY (2004)

Country : Japan

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 1H25

Director:

Katsuya Matsumura

Cast: Yukiko Okamoto, Asuka Kurosawa, Kota Kusano, Mami Nakamura

Story: Yoko Noguchi is a beautiful and successful plastic surgeon with a very peculiar patient- a psychologically unbalanced woman named Yoshie. Yoshie begs Yoko to perform surgery on her when all other doctors refuse. Yoshie behaves like a very obvious loony, but she is loaded with money (although does not appear to be rich) which she lavishly pours on Yoko. Yoko ultimately accepts the challenge, but after the operation realizes that it was only the beginning: after having her face corrected, Yoshio wants her belly and later her virginal vagina operated as well… Yoko succumbs to these demands as well, but making Yoshie beautiful is only the preparation for a very ugly ending…

 

Review: If you are tired of J-horror being equated with ghostly female black-haired apparitions, THE TERROR OF BEAUTY offers a reminder of another popular staple of Japanese horror - the equivalent of hard R splatter in which the accent is put on body horror with strong surgical overtones, filled with moralizing about human mortality and hypocrisy. As this sub-genre is usually very low budget (unlike its more respectable, ghostly cousins), another element commonly found in it is plenty of sex and nudity.

Who would be better to provide this kind of entertainment than Katsuya Matsumura, whose fame lies mostly in the wonderfully, unbearably sicko/sleazy ALL NIGHT LONG series (five parts so far, but only the first three are available in the English speaking world). Beneath the veneer of crude direct to video exploitation the ALL NIGHT LONG flicks actually provided a genuine, original and surprisingly intelligent satire on modern Japan, especially the world of otakus, outcasts and youth gangs indulging in all kinds of depravity. THE TERROR OF BEAUTY would seem to provide an excellent opportunity for another inspired mixture of satire and sleaze, ideas and gore, sex and death, social concerns and opportunistic exploitation. Unfortunately, the end result is below the expectations that this author and these themes would seem to inspire.

 

THE TERROR OF BEAUTY suffers from a lame script which is too simple-minded and straightforward to provide enough food for either brain or… well, whatever organ the gore hounds have. By deciding to mystify Yoshie’s origin, including the incredible amounts of money at her disposal, the scriptwriters deprive the film of any real drama. The two main characters are sketched in broad strokes: a beautiful but greedy plastic surgeon and an ugly AND creepy disturbed woman. That is all you learn about them. Yoko’s boyfriend is not even a cipher- it seems that his sole function in the flick is for Yoko to have someone to talk to and thus speak up her thoughts to the audience.

 

Of course, coming to a film like this, character development may not be your first demand- but Matsumura, surprisingly, disappoints even in what he’s usually doing best. The nudity quota is relatively low (for his standards), the surgical tools are barely touched, the explicit operations are present in a couple of uninspired seconds and the gore scenes are limited to splashes of unconvincingly colored violet/red liquid. To be honest, there are a few queasy moments involving liposuction and at the very end, when the frail beauty, recently operated, starts unstitching. The common viewer has enough of unpleasantness to cover his/her eyes from, but more experienced splatter-fans, anxiously expecting to see what kind of aces Matsumura may have up his sleeves could be a bit disappointed.

THE TERROR OF BEAUTY is obviously a quickie whose no-budget makes the ALL NIGHT LONG series look like SCREAM. It’s limited to three different rooms and as many ‘characters’, so there’s not much production value to speak of; the camera is barely functional, but most of the scenes are over-lit and lacking in any kind of beauty. The score is sweet, quiet and barely noticeable while the make up effects are decent, though obviously cheap, and not nearly as prominent as you might expect from a film with a ‘surgical’ plot like this. All in all, this flick is watchable since it’s not too boring (but it’s not too exciting either!), so some viewers –you know who you are!- may want to rent it, but note that it is not a highly rewatchable film which would require a constant place in your collection.

 

DVD [ NTSC, Region 1 ] :

The DVD comes in a bland, unattractive cover which fails to even mention its main selling point: namely, that it’s made by the director of ALL NIGHT LONG films. For some reason, the pictures from the film on the back cover are all in black and white (?!). It’s not clear whether Media Blasters is trying to sell this as some kind of TETSUO or RUBBER’S LOVER, or if they’re merely cutting costs in saving their color for better films. THE TERROR OF BEAUTY is presented in color, 1.85:1 anamorphic wide screen, with the kind of visuals you can expect from a direct-to-video flick. The same goes for the sound, in Dolby stereo: there is a Japanese audio track, with decent English subs. The extras include a 20 minute ‘Making of’ feature (with interviews with the lead ladies, but mysteriously – no Matsumura; was he a hack for hire in this product?), trailer for this and several other Tokyo shock flicks (IZO, ONE MISSED CALL…), and that’s about it.