Grotesque (2009; Koji Shiraishi)

Way back when I reviewed a movie called Noroi, which was themed similarly to the Blair Witch Project. In said review I also said the director had made other films themed off of the long-black-haired-girl craze in the form of "Ju-rei" and "Kuchisake-onna". Sprinkled onto the end was a little note containing the title and genre of his newest work, Grotesque. It seems it is time to leave the hair behind and go for a modern day torture porn flick. Awesome.


What to put into the summary... well, two people who just started dating get tortured.

You see the thing is, much in the vein of what Eli Roth wanted to do (but US censors didn't want him to do) Shiraishi brings back the certain flavor that torture porn films need. "Grotesque" comes straight to its point at the very beginning and doesn't stay longer than it wants to. The whole genius of this piece comes with the fact that Shiraishi got to make exactly what he had in mind; a brutal and explorative adventure into torture and rape that doesn't bother with the modern nonsense it doesn't require such as character development.

That isn't to say that this movie has no inner themes to it. You might be able to pull out some ideas about love (strangely enough) or something silly like that, but then why are you watching this film of all things? On that note, why was it necessary to include those things at all? I know I said Shiraishi's genius was his ability to do away with unneeded garbage, but that wasn't exactly true. It was just about 95% true, which is a lot closer than most people come.

The problem with Grotesque, however, begins a little past the half way mark. We are shown a very surreal series of scenes that didn't quite fit the relentless butchery that had been thrown into our faces up until that point. While I have mixed emotions about that segment of the film, it is not the only piece that will yank you back into reality. Near the ending the film takes a sudden, unwarrented change in tone that kills some of the final impact of it all. It felt sort of like a cop out when Shiraishi had already taken it so far.

Do these segments ruin the film? Hardly. I give kudos to Shiraishi for his attempt at updating the torture genre. The torture itself, being the main focus in the first place, is very vivid and can easily succeed in making any normal person look away in disgust. It is just a shame that the atmosphere had to be broken in a way that it could not be repaired.

Score: 4/5

Notes: Would you die for someone you love?

Kichiku Dai Enkai (1997; Kazuyoshi Kumakiri)

Kichiku Dai Enkai comes off as sort of an inspirational film, as strange as that may sound. Not to the degree that I find their vague rebellionism inspiring or that I find their clothing so hip to the jive. It is more that this film plays like a gore film should. It has some good effects, some half decent acting, and even some good camera work. What is so inspirational about that? This was Kumakiri's senior thesis in college and is really just his college buddies messing around on tape.


As the story goes, some political college group gets in trouble and their beloved leader goes to jail. He decided to put his girlfriend in charge of the group which begins to sew discontent, etc.

I'm going to keep this review on the short side as I already wrote another review recently and I really should be writing papers instead. As stated before, this is a college level piece, but don't let that give you any wrong ideas. The only thing that gives away that this is a college work is the fact that the stars are all college aged.

The camera is what really sold me. While it has an amateur feel to it, it also portrays a very serious and skilled knowledge of the do's and do not's. The first Evil Dead film comes to mind as a comparison, however, I feel that Kumakiri does it a little better than young Raimi.

The score is sparse (whether it be from lack of budget or actual choice I'm not sure) but is effective enough when used. The real problem here lies with the pacing. To succeed at making a slowly paced, character driven piece (which believe it or not is what this film is) you really need to have actors that shine and can carry a lot of weight with their dialogue. While this shows ambition, it really isn't an area that tends to excel in college works. While I doubt it was naivity on Kumakiri's part, it still is a wound that the film never really can rebound from.

Score: 3/5

Notes: Slow Pacing? Character Development? In a gore film?

Kourei (2000; Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a big name in the J-horror circle, however he is a man I have more or less ignored for mostly monetary reasons. The only other work I have seen of his before this one was his very popular Kairo. There is one thing that becomes apparent from watching either of the previously stated pieces, and that is that Kurosawa has quite an eye for camera.


A psychic is out to prove herself as real with the help of a college student. She is given the opportunity to when a young girl gets kidnapped off of a playground, but things go wrong, shit goes down, etc...

I have a problem with movies dealing with psychics. It's not so much that they are bad plot devices, it's just that I get so sick of them because I know "psychics" in the real world are just people robbing others of their money. I can't help myself from getting annoyed whenever I see one on film, even if they are "real" in terms of the story. It would be unfair for me to dock this film for that however, but I just had to get it out there.

As I stated earlier in the introduction, Kurosawa's mastery of the camera is very much apparent. He uses everything from slow crawls, first person perspectives, and room sweeps all to their fullest potential. He tries his hardest to get everything he can from his chilling sequences. Speaking of which...

Kurosawa also presents his chills and scares very effectively. He is not shy in showing you what the characters see, and he tries his hardest with the use of a limited score and effective camera to make every second of it count. He also doesn't use cheap shots to try and scare you; he uses an effectively built up atmosphere to slowly build up a lingering sense of paranoia.

So is there anything wrong with it? While Kurosawa does build the atmosphere he wants, the films slow pace sometimes works against it instead of for it. There is also a reference to Dopplegangers that is played with but sort of just becomes neglected. While this may look like your average J-horror film on the outside, it plays very much different from your Ju-on's and your One Missed Calls. This is very much a low key, brooding piece meant to haunt you long after it is over. So while it's pacing halters it slightly, Kurosawa achieves what he set out for in the end, giving this film a score of...

Score: 4/5

Notes: Long. Black. Hair. Again.

Noroi (2005; Koji Shiraishi)

I can now officially say that Koji Shiraishi is a director whose body of works completely confounds me. He is the director of Kuchisake-Onna (Carved) which was an awfully mediocre underachievement of generic asian cinema. Also, while never having seen it, Ju-Rei was a film that was torn apart by critics (not that they matter too much) for being exactly what I described Carved as.


Out of the blue, Noroi. A film so scary I actually looked away. As embarrasing as that may sound, true horror/gore hounds such as myself live for events such as this. The thrill of being scared, even if only for a few moments, makes it all worth while. However, when a movie such as Noroi comes around, dealing those thrills out in spades, it can bring most people to their knees (or just have them look away like I had to). Our main man is a paranormal investigator who is currently looking into a curse and the connections between the people it is having an effect upon.

(Don't worry, I went back and watched the scene again so I didn't miss anything.)

So do you see my confusion with Shiraishi now? On one hand he is scraping the bottom of the J-horror bucket looking for any long haired actresses that might be left over, and then on the other he is making possibly the scariest mockumentary that exists to this day. It has also come to my attention that his newest work might actually be yet another peak in his career so I will be waiting impatiently with both eyes wide open (mostly because Noroi has made me too scared to close them).


Right, onto the movie... Well, as usual with mockumentaries, there is only so much that can be said. So much of the success relies upon powerful acting and storytelling, which this film is drowning in, and once they obtain those aspects they are well on their way to being a diamond in the rough. All the performances in this film are top of the line (with a special nod to Mitsuo Hori with a mind blowing performance as an eccentric "super psychic").

As far as storytelling, Shiraishi took great care to craft an intricate backstory to go along with the "current" events to tie it all together. This leads to a world that feels very much real, which in return only draws us, the viewers, into the curse that much deeper. The development of the backstory reminds me very much of another high class mockumentary film (Blair Witch) that uses it as a method to make the material that much more real. We suddenly question whether or not these films are actually mockumentaries.

There is a score used here, but it is very scarce. It is simply sprinkled in to make the experience that much more horrifying.

To quote a critic who is much more popular than I...

"So in summary: if you don't crap yourself by the end of Noroi, then chances are that you're dead inside and no amount of horror movies will ever scare you."

Score: 4.5/5

Notes: Score is subject to change. I felt such an urgency to get the word out about this film that I haven't given myself time to watch it a second time yet.

P.S. The quote can be found here... mandiapple.com/snowblood/noroi.htm

P.P.S. Shiraishi's newest film is named Grotesque, and is a very intriguing looking torture porn.

Sukiyaki Western Django (2007; Takashi Miike)

Two things need to be stated here in this little introduction. Firstly, I have always loved Takashi Miike. Secondly, I have always hated westerns.

(Quite the cliff hanger, eh?)


In a small desert (until the end) town, two rival gangs fight over the ownership of the land to prospect for gold. We are treated to a mysterious hero coming in to try and end the battle between the White's (pictured above) and the Red's (pictured below) before it reaches even more ridiculous proportions.


When I first heard about this project a while back, I thought the idea of Miike, one of the masters of shock cinema, creating a spaghetti western seemed a bit of a stretch. However, I have learned over the years never to judge Miike's works until you actually watch them. I was going to put off purchasing and reviewing this film until it's price dropped, but the lure of Tarantino in a Miike film was too much for me to handle so I caved.

From the very forced English dialogue coming from Japanese actors to the stereotyped western setting, every piece of this movie feels perfect. By every piece I mean almost every piece, I just thought the sentence would flow better if I used every instead of almost every. Anyway.

The colors vary from bright whites to muddy browns. The camera goes from corny (on purpose) western shoot-outs to beautiful "landscape" shots as I like to call them (couldn't think of a better word for set pieces that would get my point across). Every inch of this film is filled to the brim with the heart and spirit of a man (Miike) who loves his work (or in this case, someone elses terrible genre). His understanding of how to make the film was almost perfect (once again, stressing the almost as I will get to the negative in a bit).

Now when dealing with a film filled with stereotypes up the ass, it is hard to craft each concept without it feeling boring or forced. Miike almost pulled it all off, except for some of the love story parts. Some of them (one "romantic" scene near the end dealing with two people crawling comes to mind) just felt unneccesary to the completion of the story.

Score: 4.5/5

Notes: Tarantino, Forced English Dialogue

Fall Guy (1982; Kinji Fukasaku)

Ah, Kinji Fukasaku, the man that brought us the almost painfully mainstream success here in the US, Battle Royale. There is nothing wrong with being mainstream or being Battle Royale, it is just more of that Dark Knight syndrome following it around. I shall leave the rest of my comments for my Battle Royale I & II review sometime in the future...


First off I don't know much about the history of this film, so I have no idea if it really was shot in black and white the first time around, however, the R1 copy of the film is in color, so those of you who flip out about not having color can calm down.

My summary for this piece will be a little longer than normal as I feel to better understand this film, you need a fuller history to it. Our lead (Yasu or something like that) is a bit player, meaning he is just one of those faceless guys in the movies (mostly samurai movies in this case) who gets thrown around. In this case, he is being thrown around by his idol, Ginshiro or something (I am bad with names). Part of the culture during this generation was that lead actors were like super stars, and their fans would pretty much do anything for them. Well, Ginshiro is losing his fans to another, younger lead actor (name is unimportant and forgotten by me) and ontop of this, the record setting stunt shot he was supposed to shoot (flipping a man down a 30 foot tall staircase) had been cut because no bit player or stuntman was brave enough to take the fall.

Then more tradegy strikes Ginshiro when he finds out his girlfriend has gotten pregnant. I shouldn't have to tell you, but just incase, that was a big no-no in Japan (as well as the US if it counts for anything). To help save his crumbling face, he asks (forces) Yasu to pretend to be the father of the child and to marry the girl. Yasu's love for Ginshiro (and his secret love for Ginshiro's girlfriend) lead him to say yes, which in return leads to him taking more dangerous rolls in films to pay for the extra mouths.

I don't know about you, but I find the story behind this film to be quite genius. Yasu is an optimistically pathetic character who his pushed around due to his nice demeanor. Ginshiro is a once powerful man who is becoming pushier as his downfall approaches. Whats-her-face is a woman torn between the father of her child (whom she also loves) and the man who is obviously willing to do anything to make her happy. Once you add into the mix the fact that every single character in this film is delibrately overacted (to the point where most lines are actually being screamed and not spoken) to mirror how extreme (and ludicrous) their devotions are, it quickly becomes a recipe for success.

Now I will briefly cover my other usual sections. The music is very catchy, especially the main song that opens up the film, which is never a bad thing. The camera is actually the only thing that remains "normal" among the absurdity of the film, which brings a wonderful sense that we (the camera representing us) are not as crazy as what we are seeing. The only reason I am not handing this film a perfect score is because I have only seen it once, and I never hand out 10's after only one viewing. Whenever I watch this film again, I might come back and edit the score as I see fit, but for now...

Score: 4.5/5

Notes: Movie about a Movie about a Movie.

Long Dream (2000; Higuchinsky)

I noticed that I was leaning way too far into American cinema, so let me switch gears and move to something a little more... not American.


It depresses me thinking that the only picture I could find was the cover. It is not that it is a bad cover, it is that there aren't enough people out there who know about this film to post actual stills. This fantastic work was brought to us by Higuchinsky, a man who is terribly under worked (only having two full lengths and this under his belt) and whose best known film, Uzumaki, has been considered one of the most imaginative movies around. One reason this short (not really a short... it is somewhere near the one hour point, which makes it more of a... silm? fhort? I will stick with fhort) has gotten so little attention is because for some reason no one wants to release it? Why that is is absolutely beyond me, as the story of the film is very thought provoking to say the least.

Nagai Yume (literally Long Dream when translated) has a character with a very troubling problem. Whenever he goes to sleep, it feels as if his dreams are the lengths of whole days. He soon discovers that each time he goes back to sleep, the dreams feel longer and longer, to the point where months or even years go by in the dream, which begins to have effects on not only his mental stabilty but his outward appearence as well. One night he asks his doctor a very important question that no one could think of an answer to. What would happen if the dreams got so long, they lasted forever?

True to his form in Uzumaki (why that film doesn't feel the need to be translated like the rest is beyond me) Higuchinsky brings us a very interesting concept in a very stunning manner. His use of colors is simply captivating to me and while his scores never really seem to stay in my head long, everytime I do hear them again, I get the comfortable feeling of nostalgia.

My main problem with the fhort was how the story had to close with the doctors not the patient (I am trying to be as vague as possible). I feel that leaving the doctors as minor characters and focusing only on the patient would have made it a much more compelling piece of work.

Score: 3/5

Notes: Aliens, Romance