(2004) ***1/2
A freelance videographer catches a man committing suicide, via knife straight into the eye, on camera. He becomes obsessed with the man’s look of terror that embraced him before the act. Longing to possess such terror himself, he wanders into a subterranean underworld that is hidden below the streets of Tokyo. In this netherworld, he finds a young woman, naked, emaciated and chained to a rock. He frees her and brings her home. She refuses to eat or drink anything, she doesn’t speak and crawls about on all fours. After accidentally discovering her sustenance is blood, he begins killing to feed his “pet”. Strange people, watching his every move follow him as he descends deeper and deeper into madness.
I was fully expecting to see a J-horror ghost flick thanks to Netflix and their ill description of this film. They weren’t even close. However, what I got was a surprisingly unique film with a complex storyline. Very interesting indeed, it’s kind of cool sometimes how that happens. If you’re up for something deeper than the slashers are, haunted houses and giant monsters, give Marebito a go.
3 comments:
I watched this years ago but forgot all about it until I read your review. I seem to recall having a similar reaction. It's different, but decent. Good find.
As I recall, the first and last shots of this movie are the same, and I'm pretty sure I predicted exactly what we were looking at in the opening teaser. I should mention that I'd read a fair amount about it first, as it was a popular subject in the very early days of the blog.
However, I did NOT predict everything that happened on the way there. A very interesting, quiet twist.
There's also an interesting portrayal of the underworld as being mundanely like this world.
This is probably the best example of a particular kind of J-Horror movie I can think of: a balance between straight up scary and weird (think Kairo and goes-off-in-crazy directions (think Suicide Circle, but the important thing is it doesn't piss you off like Suicide Circle).
Sounds very interesting. It's nice when one of Netflix's crappy descriptions actually works the other way!
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