Jaws in Japan

Jaws in Japan

(ジョーズ・イン・ジャパン）

A.k.a. Psycho Shark

The Story:

Two friends, Miki and Mai, go to a beach resort on holidays. The resort has a policy of giving out free video cameras to guests, so the girls decide to film their vacation. When Mai meets a boy and spends all her time with him, Miki discovers a video tape left over from some previous guest. The more Miki watches the more it becomes clear that something terrible has happened, and that Mai's new boyfriend isn't who he appears to be.

The Reason:

It's Jaws. In Japan! 

The Stars:

The Shark

...Will not be appearing.

Japanese girls in bikinis

For a movie supposedly about a shark, an awful lot of the budget seems to have went to having girls prancing around in bikinis.

The Review:

Okay, so the official title is "Psycho Shark". Everyone still calls it by its working title of "Jaws in Japan" anyway. Even though it's painfully obvious that this film has no ties to the actual series, that is still a cool title. Also it has the most metal of Jaws theme knock-offs I've ever heard.
(Spoilers ahead)

Two girls arrive a beach resort in Okinawa and are given a camera. Que ten minute montage of them prancing around in bikinis.

Miki and Mai run around at the beach for awhile and it becomes very noticeable that no one ever seems to go any deeper than ankle-deep whenever they enter the water. Very strange considering this movie is supposed to have a shark in it.

After they're done flaunting the cleavage for the time being, Mai abandons Miki to go be with a beach stud she's just met. Miki mopes around the hotel room for awhile until she finds a tape hidden under one of the beds.

It's a video of the previous group of girls that stayed at the hotel. They dance around for the camera and there's a few disjointed shots that seem to jump around for no reason. Miki gets bored pretty soon and goes to have a shower scene (wearing her bikini).

Suddenly a scene where the cast's fear of water seems to be averted. The girls actually go swimming for a change. In the water. A very CG dorsal fin breaks the water. The music builds. Miki screams incoherently for Mai to get out of the water. And then...

It was all a dream. Strange when a movie notices that you've stopped paying attention and decides it needs to spice things up for awhile. Anyway, Miki goes back to watching the footage she's found. It shows the girls discussing a boy they've met, and how one of them has fallen madly in love.

As Miki keeps watching, she discovers that something terrible has happened to the girls. Glimsped briefly at the end of the tape, Miki witnesses one of the girls be brutally murdered by the boy. Shocked and horrified, Miki shows Mai the tape, but she can't seem to find that part again.

Boom. This movie is now about a psycho killer instead of a shark.

Miki keeps watching the tape until she witnesses the entire bizarre sequence of the girls' deaths. Slowly she realises that the boy in the video is the same guy Mai is dating. And she's alone with him. Right now.

Miki runs to the beach to stop him. And then the shark appears in all its 50 foot gloriousness. To say the shark looks fake is to do injustice to the shark. It simply is, that is all.

It ends in much the same way it began. Footage of happy girls dancing in bikinis cutting away to a lone girl sitting quietly in a dark hotel room. The End.

Overall:
There is two ways of viewing this film:

Way 1: Failed B-movie
This film was a terrible excuse for a movie. It couldn't even manage a simple plotline and the shark had no relevance to anything. What a waste of time :c

Way 2: Brilliantly played story of one girl's descent into madness
While the movie seems like it's made up of nothing but cleavage shots and bad acting, there is actually a layer of subtlety present that you wouldn't expect to find here. Instead of being a story about a shark eating people, it's a story about Miki losing her friend and creating a fantasy involving a group of girls she found a video of. As the reality of her friend leaving her encroaches, her fantasy takes darker and darker turns leading up until she snaps and murders everyone.

I tend to lean more towards way 2. The constant disjointed way the footage jumps around, often repeating the same scene out of sync makes me think that this is a case of unreliable narrator in play. The biggest clue that we might not be seeing what everyone else is seeing is the murder scene on the tape. When Miki tries to show it to Mai all she sees is a group of friends hanging around on the beach, but when she watches it herself she witness the murders. The key point being that in both shots the timer remains ticking at the same time.

The inconsistencies build as she draws closer to confronting Mai's boyfriend. Why does he have the same name as the truck driver from the beginning? How does Miki even know his name when Mai never introduced him? Why is that old man with a camera suddenly there? And how is it that a gaint shark can fly?

A lot of people write this movie off as a terrible B-movie, but I like to think it's subtlety done extremely well. Especially if you interpret the final shot in the style of way 2.

Stats:

Watched: Subbed

Understood: Yes. Dialogue was very fuzzy most of the time.

Does it matter: That is entirely a matter of opinion.

Would watch again: Maybe. Someday.

Recommend: Only if you really feel like doing it.

Rating: What did I just watch? / Bad but good.

Amazon link

Bonus:

There are many shots that don't make any sense unless you view them in way 2, so I'd like to believe the canonical story is that Miki snapped and murdered everyone then constructed a fantasy about a killer and a shark to hide from it. It would explain why the film starts and ends with her staring at TV static in a dark room. 

That or the entire production crew was really high while filming this.

Hikiko-san

Hikiko-san

(ひきこさん）
A.k.a. Scream Girls

The Story:

A group of high school horror fanatics start investigating the rumours of a series of bizarre murders happening in their city. In each case, the victim has been dragged across the pavement until they were torn to shreds. The girls soon come to believe the murders are being caused by Hikiko-san, a ghost that targets victims of abuse and drags them to their death. When one of the girls manages to get a photo of the mysterious killer, her life is turned upside down. Blamed for the murders and abandoned by her friends, the only friend Kaori has left is stranger on the internet with the screen-name Hikiko.

The Reason:
After watching Hikiko vs. Kuchisake-onna, I was curious what Hikiko was actually like. Even though that movie was poorly handled, I felt Hikiko had the potential to be an actual threat if done right. I'm glad I did.

The Star:
Hikiko-san

A vengeful ghost that targets victims of abuse and drags them to their death.

Very bandaged and raggedy, she appears and shambles about like a zombie with a broken back. She's played with around the same level of subtlety as in Vs, however, it's used to much greater effect this time. While she does drag her feet and moves ridiculously slow, she also abuses the crap out of the between-scene-scooter by teleport spamming behind her victim as soon as they take their eyes of her.

The Review:
This entire movie is shot in grey-scale giving it a very avant-garde feel that's somewhere between student-film and found-footage. It may seem gimmicky to begin with, but it does add a whole other layer to the atmosphere.

The movie starts with the group updating their horror blog and discussing the bizarre string of murders. It does feel like a bit of a slow boil teen drama at times, but that's okay because before long the girls are talking about Hikiko-san and the rumours of her involvement.

Kaori snaps a picture of a mysterious figure standing over one of the crime scenes and then strange things start happening. After a local girl dies, her friends tell her to drop it and move on, but Kaori is obsessed. She can't quite seem to get Hikiko out of her head.

Someone posts a cryptic message to their site and suddenly everyone is blaming Kaori for causing the murders. The class bully starts attacking and humiliating her, her friends abandon her, and every night her abusive father takes to beating her. 

Kaori starts having vivid dreams of being dragged to her death by Hikiko-san, and soon she can no longer tell reality from the dreams. She feels Hikiko-san getting closer. Drawn in by the abuse that she is suffering.

Frightened and alone, Kaori turns to a stranger on the internet. Constantly suffering, Kaori's one light in the darkness is her new friend known only as Hikiko. Kaori confides in her as her life gradually becomes a living hell, but is her friend really who she claims to be?

Overall:

This movie is just brutal. And I love it. I'm not even sure if I'd class this as a horror movie, but by halfway through I was sitting there awestruck completely engrossed in watching. I don't think I've ever seen a movie with the impact this one had, I was literally struck speechless by the end.

The level of abuse Kaori suffers over the film's 1hr duration is terrifying, and the torture she undergoes from the school bitch squad would be enough to count as a war-crime if they were soldiers. It really made me feel for the character, and then the ending happened. It was the perfect cap to events with a twist that, maybe a bit predictable, managed to tie things off perfectly.

Stats:

Watched: RAW

Understood: Around 80-90%

Does it matter: I have a theory that this movie would work just as well even without understanding a word.

Would watch again: Hell yes.

Recommend: Go. Do it now!

Rating: Must See

Amazon link

Bonus:

While she was playing hide-and-seek at the beginning of the film, Hikiko kind of reminded me of the First Slayer from Buffy.