Marebito

Have you ever had the desire to see another side of life but at the risk of losing your sanity? All you have to do is submit your imagination to the devil and allow yourself to spiral out of realities polished grip into a subterranean world of mythology and lore that has its place in the minds of the most twisted creators in the fictional field. This is the desire of Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto), the star of Takashi Shimizu’s (Ju-on, Ju-on 2) Marebito, who is desperate to see the horror that becomes hidden by the naked eye. Armed with a camera, Masuoka leads the life of a freelance cameraman, who in his spare time indulges in his voyeuristic tendencies by setting up cameras that peep into the lives of others, whilst he watches from his cyber-styled black-hole of an apartment that is kitted out with numerous computers and television screens.

Masuoka is a man obsessed with the concept of fear and how it manifests itself in people who are in seemingly life and death situations (he seems to choose people on the brink of society i.e. drug users, masochists etc). Being a voyeur doesn’t satisfy in him some sexual perversion of seeing anything erotic, but gives him the opportunity to look into the faces of those he watches for fear and what it is that has caused it. He is a man who is searching for fear because he has yet to experience true fear himself.

After capturing footage of a recent subway suicide, by a man who sought the same things as Masuoka, he becomes entangled between intersecting dimensions, set off by his visions of “Deros” (creatures from the netherworld), and begins his descent into the truth he has been seeking. Starting with the Tokyo metropolis subway where the suicide occurred he is led deeper down via M.C. Escher stairways and dark passageways into a world of H.P Lovecraft Mountains of Madness, developing a mystique that shares similarities to Guillermo’s Pan’s Labyrinth. Here he will find a girl who will link him to this world after he returns with her to his own, and of whom he will keep as a pet whilst trying to teach her how to be a human. Unfortunately or fortunately (probably the latter knowing him) for Masuoka, he discovers that his new found pet girl is only satiated by the taste of blood, preferably human; and so begins the plot of a film that will have you simultaneously cringing with revulsion and gazing in wonder at images that are both sick but sweet (aided by the adorable Tomomi Miyashita).

Whilst the events that occur do raise many unanswered questions about the subjectivity of what is happening (i.e are the supernatural elements and the “Deros” real or just extensions of Masuoka’s “de-prozaced” imagination and does his “surface” life exist as we are led to believe it does), this never seems to matter because the film is all about Masuoka’s journey into fear and madness and not the reliability or filling of plot holes.

Marebito has a filtered, gritty, mokumentary filmmaking style, it was shot all on digital video, and can be a little disorientating at times (though not as much as Tsukamoto’s own Tetsuo The Iron Man, which remains undefeated champion for creating that dizzy sensation). In hindsight though, this was probably one of the goals of the film given that we are seeing everything from the perspective of a deteriorating madman. Marebito is a refreshing achievement as it moves away from the whole trapped-ghost-with-a-grudge formula that seems to have established itself as solid as a rock since Ringu, and uses psychological fear that is rooted more in the fear of oneself and the false truths we hold onto to keep us sane (which I think is far more frightening than Ringu, a film which I love but not because of its scare factor). The acting by Tuskamoto is first rate as he makes the viewer feel as though they were right there with him and always on his side, hoping that he will find the answers he’s looking for, and sinking in despair with him as he makes his suffering palpable.
All that is required though for you to enjoy this film is that you be a fan of weird, violent and depressing as hell films about fear, loneliness and being dead inside. This is J-Horror spiralling forward.