31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Noroi (The Curse)

Noroi (The Curse)

Last night I realized I hadn't watched any J-horror so far this year. Casting about on Shudder revealed that they had Sadako vs Kayako - but I just couldn't bring myself to watch it. I know - I'm contemplating a Bill Rebane double feature, but this is where I draw the line? What can I say - I've only got low expectations for Giant Spider Invasion, but I really enjoyed Ringu, Ju-On and their US remakes. I sense only disappointment coming from watching a film where those two characters clash. (And I say this as someone who actually enjoyed Freddy vs Jason.)

I did see that they had a film called Noroi: The Curse by the same director. Not necessarily a high recommendation, I know, but it looked like an early (2005) Japanese found footage horror film (not something I've seen a lot of). I looked up the director, and realized I'd seen at least one of his films, Shirome, another found footage flick. I didn't remember much about it (other than the butterfly imagery and a lot of screaming girls), but it was enough to make me take the plunge. "Five minutes," I thought. "if it doesn't catch me in five minutes I'll bail and find something else."

Something with more gravestones in it.

Well, it caught me.

The Medium
Noroi is a Shudder exclusive, which I think means it's the only service with the streaming rights (in the US anyway). The quality was as good as you can expect for a film that appears to have been shot in standard definition on various media (including VHS tape). (That's consistent with the context of the film, and not a budget consideration.)

The Movie
Noroi is a bit of a film-within-a-film in that the framing sequence - a matter of a few minutes introduction and ending - is presenting the final work of a 'well known' journalist and paranormal expert, Masafumi Kobayashi. The majority of the film is the actual documentary - finished before Kobayashi disappeared in the wake of a fire at his home that resulted in the death of his wife.

"That totally has nothing to do with the documentary though, right?"

This is a great choice and allows for pacing, music, repetitive visuals, slow motion and generally all of the filmmaking tricks one uses when creating a documentary to try and tell a story. There's no need to have long sequences of running through the woods with vague shouting (although, to be fair, there is a bit of that) or people saying things people would never actually say in order to get information across. We get newspaper clippings, segments from (actual) Japanese TV shows, interviews and footage from various sources edited together to create tension and mood, while still maintaining that 'realistic' feeling. And of course you've got a cameraman and a documentary filmmaker - the perfect excuse to keep the cameras rolling when most people would have dropped the damn thing and beat feet.

Like I totally would have if this showed up.

Kobayashi's documentary is called The Curse (natch) and details his final investigation, starting with a woman's call about a strange neighbor and developing through to a final exploration of the events in and around a 'drowned' village (flooded by a damn). Along the way we'll see psychic kids, tinfoil hat (and clothes) wearing conspiracy theorists, strange knots, possessed TV stars, suicidal pigeons, ancient shrines and much more besides. It sounds like a lot - and it is - but here the films length actually works for it, allowing all these disparate threads to slowly weave together, forming a tapestry of unsettling events and people.

"And worms! Ectoplasmic worms!"

There are a few missteps in execution and not every actor is as good as the leads, but to be honest I'm only thinking about those things in retrospect. They didn't bother me while I was watching - I was pretty engrossed. There's also one dodgy piece of CGI, but it was horrifying enough in context that I didn't notice until the film re-used it later. The scares are more in a growing sense of unease and the creepiness of realizing what's going on. There are some jump scares, but they're few and used to good effect. I found the ending pretty clear (and horrifying), but some might find it either too ambiguous or too flat.

Sleep with this ambiguity in your head tonight, though.

The Bottom Line
Noroi is a really effective horror movie - in mood and execution it kinda reminded me of Junji Ito's work, though not as gory or bizarre as they tend to end up. There's a great mood and the sense of being unsettled by what you're seeing. It's in the unsaid things that slowly add up and the implications you're led to. One of the better found footage movies I've seen and highly recommended.

Still not up for watching Sadako vs Kayako, though.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Matango AKA Attack of the Mushroom People

Just before I came to post this I got a spam email titled "Truth About Fungus." Make of that what you will.

"Yeah. I ate mushrooms. Now you know."

If we're talking truth in titles, this should actually be called Attack of the Mushroom People in the Last Ten Minutes of the Film. It's an indelible and psychedelic attack, to be sure, but man... it was a lot of pointless bickering and unexpected musical numbers to get there.

Matango was recommended to me back in 2013 when I intimated that I'd watched the most WTF film I'd ever seen. (This was House, or Hausu - the 1977 surreal ghost story by Nobuhiko Obayashi.) I'd never even heard of Matango, but the descriptions made it seem just as full of batshit craziness as House - as hard as that was to believe. Not that there isn't some craziness in Matango - but nothing to the level of 'bananas bananas bananas.'

This scene looks awesome! But it's not actually in the movie.

The Medium
Saw it streaming and dubbed. It wasn't a horrible dubbing job - probably as good as you could get for 1963 - but I'd have preferred to see it subtitled. Everyone's a little too cartoony sounding  - especially given how menacing the music is.

This is an Ishirō Honda movie, so it's well put together, shot and edited.

The Movie

Despite the title, the vast majority of this film features no mushroom people - we don't even catch a glimpse of one for 43 minutes, unless the crew of 'the yacht' count. It's mostly in a disaster movie template, with a disparate group of people on a (3 hour) tour whose yacht is damaged by a storm. They're forced to take shelter on a deserted island. An island that sports an extraordinary growth of mushrooms...

Which ones do I eat to get smaller?

Most of this film is arguing and petty posturing, primarily among the men. The rich guy is a cowardly dick, the deckhand is a thief and wannabe rapist, the writer only has a tenuous grasp of reality and the Philosophy Professor is expected to do all the Science! because he has a secondary education. The women represent the Whore and the Virgin - but at least the Whore can sing. Which she does. At length.

"Go ahead. Start singing one. More. Time."

I'm making fun of the film, but it IS quite good in spots. The music and lighting is often effective. When the group finds a shipwrecked cargo ship it's eerily covered in mold and mushrooms, inside and out. The way they dressed the set is damn impressive - I could almost smell the mold and had to stifle the urge to cough. There's no sign of the crew - but evidence seems to suggest it was a kind of research ship - maybe engaged in working with radiation.

Skipper, Ginger, Maryanne... wait, two Gilligans? They're screwed.

Despite the mold and the possible radiation poisoning the gang decides to hole up in the larger ship. Unfortunately for our survivors, there's very little in the way of food on board. Soon they're stealing food, hiding food and paying hundreds of thousands of yen for a handful of turtle eggs. There's always the abundant mushroom growth on the island, but the Professor urges everyone to avoid them as there's no way of telling which are poisonous and which are not. Starvation isn't their only problem, however - there's also the question of what happened to the crew.

Spoiler alert: the crew are all mushroom people now. And, at a later point, they attack.

"But I'm sure THESE mushrooms are fine to eat."

The mushroom people and their mushroom garden ARE pretty interesting when they finally show up. Steamy psychedelic colors and a constant high-pitched moaning help create a surreal and menacing atmosphere. Eating the mushrooms is what begins the process, of course, and we've already got an idea of where things are headed because of certain culinary indiscretions on the part of the writer character earlier. Still, the big attack sequence descends into farce fairly quickly, with the professor ping-ponging between stiff and moaning man-sized mushrooms before walking briskly away.

But not without some obligatory gunfire! That always works with mushrooms.

The Bottom Line

This movie should have brought the mushroom people in earlier, or should be a lot shorter. There's some fun to be had with the characters and the ship - I expected a Scooby-Doo-like chase through the various rooms at one point - but it all goes on too long with little resolution. Fun to waste time with on a rainy Sunday afternoon - but not as much fun as your average Godzilla movie.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Kwaidan

Kwaidan (1964)

I love when something I've never heard of just blows me away with how good it is. It's a rare thing, and I can't really think of the last time it's happened to me. Kwaidan is that good, though, that much better than I expected it to be. It's a movie made in 1964 in Japan that is an adaptation of several Japanese folk tales as written by a Greek named Lafcadio Hearns. It should be a mess. Instead, it's one of the most beautiful horror movies I've ever seen.

The production is heavily stage-bound, with only the occasional location shooting. Fine for interior locations, but for exteriors shot on a sound-stage... well, in general I've found this stultifying in other productions - limiting scope and scale and imposing a "packaged" feeling on a film. Somehow the director of Kwaidan, Masaki Kobayashi, transcends these limitations - even uses them to give us fantastic vistas that would be impossible on a location shoot. The sky - illuminated by the northern lights - becomes a vista of eyes, following the action just as we do. A snow-swept forest feels just as cold and dangerous as the real thing - yet also poetic, controlled - a work of art.

I don't know, there's just something about the production. It's like a living painting - but it also feels real, more real than real, if that makes any sense. A woman and her children run through a field and the breeze that whips the grass doesn't seem fake, though the background of the sky does. It has the effect of making everything seem slightly heightened - like you're on a slight high.

There are four stories in this anthology. No real attempt is made at a frame - though the last story seems to extend beyond the borders of its own section. I'll break them out individually:

"The Black Hair"

This is actually my least favorite of the pieces - though only because of the length. The final story benefits from its brevity. It's about an impoverished samurai who selfishly divorces his wife in order to marry a wealth woman and improve his status. His new wife is cold, selfish and cruel (we're informed of that fact by the narrator - though to me it seems like she's simply young and reacting to the emotional distance of her new husband) and he finds himself longing for the simplicity of his old life and the warm, uncomplicated love of his previous wife.

Years later he returns to his old house, finding it in even worse disrepair than when he left. He does find his wife inside and they reconcile. He spends the night - only to find the morning brings a revelation that drives him mad or worse.

There's a great auditory note that occurs throughout this piece - the sound of a loom clacking. It works extremely well with the minimal music and is sometimes creepy and sometimes comforting. The pace of the piece is a little slow for me in this modern era, but I still enjoyed it. It also contains the only moment of genuine horror - albeit brief - in the entire film.

"The Woman of the Snow"

And this is my favorite segment. The plot is fairly straightforward and vaguely familiar. A young man and his master are out gathering wood when a freak winter storm traps them in an old shelter. A supernatural creature - The Woman of the Snow - kills the old man, but spares the young man's life, but makes him promise to keep her secret. Years later he marries a woman with whom he has several children - but when he tells her the story she reveals herself as the same creature.

The visuals in "The Woman of the Snow" just wowed me. They're not quite as grand as those in "Hoichi the Earless," but are somehow even more effective for all that. From the initial storm - which manages to feel both real and staged - through fall days and even warm scenes within the young man's hut, the lighting, staging and direction is just fantastic. There's a sequence in which the young man turns his head as he realizes who he is speaking to, and the lighting goes from warm oranges and reds to cool blues over the course of the pan - it's a simple effect, but it's so good. I'll end up picking this up on blue ray just to see this segment in high def.

"Hoichi the Earless"

This segment is about a blind musician, Hoichi, whose is especially proficient at performing The Tale of the Heike - a story/poem/song about a final battle between two clans. One night a samurai arrives to take him to a nearby pavilion where he is to perform this tale for an august personage. Every night he leaves the monastery where he lives and his friends and the priest grow concerned. Eventually it becomes clear that he is performing for the ghosts of those who died in that battle. To save his soul the priest and his acolyte write holy words over his entire body and instruct him to ignore the ghosts when they return. However, the two holy men have neglected a certain part of poor Hoichi's body...

This segment has some beautiful scenes, great artwork, and epic battle sequences. It's the most impressive of the film, though I still enjoy the simple emotionality of "The Woman of the Snow" more. The sets alone are worth the viewing, though. And I, for the first time, gained an appreciation for the Japanese lute - the biwa. Something I've always thought as atonal noise before. It also has some striking visuals in the final few minutes - particularly the image of Hoishi covered head to toe in calligraphy.

"In a Cup of Tea"

The weakest of the segments, "In a Cup of Tea" is at least very short. An unfinished story about a samurai who sees a man in a cup of water, the film offers a potential reason for the story's unfinished state. It involves a cup of tea...

The Bottom Line

While short on genuine horror, Kwaidan is an epic in the visual department. The skill and artistry of the people involved cannot be overstated. It's a bit stiff and formal, but that befits both the time period and the culture. I loved it.