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.

Gomen Nasai

Sorry

(ゴメン　ナサイ）
A.k.a Ring of Curse

The Story:
High school writing club member Hitaka Yuka tries to reach out to genius loner Kurohane, but she rejects Yuka's offer of friendship, more interested in writing by herself. Yuka moves on but there's something about Kurohane that is unsettling and Yuka can't quite shake the girl from her mind. When class bully Sonata, tired of always being second place to Kurohane, starts picking on the girl, a strange notebook starts circulating through the class. A notebook written by Kurohane. Anyone who reads the story dies. Can Yuka find a way to stop Kurohane's revenge before it's too late?

The Reason:
I picked this one up purely because of the cover. I didn't even bother trying to read the synopsis. All I knew was it had a girl band in it and it was under horror, so I thought it might be interesting to watch.

The Stars:
Buono!

A net idol band that provides the music and play the main three characters. It would seem they had a big hand in making this movie. It was a little worrying that the focus would be on the band appearing in their first movie instead of any actual storytelling, but I needn't have even considered it. The girl are phenomenal actresses right from the start. Before the movie is a brief intro by the girls and they manage to convey a very subtle atmosphere that becomes very important at the end of the film.

The Review:

The movie starts with Yuka narrating events in such a way as to draw you right in. She has to muster the courage to ask class loner Kurohane to join the writing club. You can tell there's something not quite right about the quiet girl sitting alone. Kurohane rejects her offer, and Yuka goes away annoyed that no matter how good her writing is their teacher is only interested in getting Kurohane to join the club.

Events start moving when class bully Sonata starts picking on Kurohane. Shoving her, throwing food at her, and generally being mean to her. As part of an elaborate joke, Sonata rigs it so that Kurohane is called to write the script for the school play. Without a peep, she accepts and begins writing a story into her notebook. Yuka tries to talk her out of it, but Kurohane has a plan.

Anyone who read her story will die. No one seems to notice when classmates start dying, except Yuka. She watches helplessly as classmates and friends slowly succumb to Kurohane's revenge. A cursed notebook that kills whoever reads from it. There's nothing Yuka can do to stop it.

Overall:
This movie was awesome. It was incredibly well done with excellent use of camera angles and sound effects. The story was told in such a way to make you feel sympathy for the characters, even the one deliberately killing people. The movie tells the story of a curse being started, drawing parallels to Sadako and her cursed video. Subtlety is the key to making a horror movie truly chilling and this one does the job perfectly. The intro and ending come together in such a way that you can feel it pulling you in.

I highly recommend that you see this as soon as possible.

Stats:
Watched: RAW
Understood: Mostly

Does it matter: Yes

Would watch again: Definitely

Recommend: Yes

Rating: Must See

Amazon link 

Bonus:

It would appear that this movie is based off the book that gets written during the course of the film. Recursion for the win.

Hikiko-san VS Kuchisake Onna

Hikiko VS the Slit-mouth Woman.

(ひきこさん VS 口裂け女)

 

   

 

The Story:

Ever since a traumatic experience left her friends in a coma, Kaori has been visiting the hospital every day in the hopes that they will some day regain consciousness. One day ten years later, the pair suddenly wake up screaming about a mysterious Hikiko that is after them; a ghost that only exists in their memories and will stop at nothing to get them back. Kaori does her best to help her friends recover and move past the trauma, but something is not right in the hospital. Rumours circulate of a strange woman glimpsed in the old buildings, a woman wearing a surgical mask and asking only "Atashi kirei?" <am I pretty?>. Before long, Kaori and her friends find themselves caught in the crossfire between two monsters of Japanese legend. It's Hikiko-san VS the Kuchisake Onna.

 

The Reason: 

I got this movie because I was so impressed by the first Kuchisake that I keep underestimating how terrible the rest of the series is. This film has little if anything to do with that series anyway. I thought that being a versus movie, they might treat the character with respect and not keep trying to reinvent the wheel with a new origin story.

The Stars:

Kuchisake Onna

"Atashi kirei?"

<Am I pretty?>

The slit-mouth woman. You walk down a dark alley and see a woman wearing a surgical mask, bleakly she asks "Atashi kirei?". If you answer, she takes off the mask to reveal a tore and twisted face. She then kills you.

Based on a popular urban legend. In my opinion the first Kuchisake Onna movie is one of the best horrors I've ever seen (the rest of the series, however, is not). I got this purely to see if they'd get her right, and out of all the characters in this film, she is by far the most interesting. She actually does things and has moments of being actually scary.

Hikiko-san

"Mou ikkai" "Mada dayo"

<one more time> <not quite yet>

A ghost that only exists when you remember her. She haunts children and if she catches you she'll beat you to death on the pavement.

To be honest, I'd never heard of Hikiko before this movie. Her description makes her sound like an actual credible threat. A kind of Freddy Krueger to the Onna's Jason. A ghost that there is no escaping from because whenever you think about her she can find you. However, her portrayal here has her come off as more of a molester spirit that is more annoying than frightening.


The Review:

For the first half of the movie NOTHING HAPPENS, and the mood comes across as more of a crappy J-Pop music video than a horror movie. The inappropriately upbeat music plays as the girls slowly recover and it becomes easy to forget that this is meant to be a monster movie. It becomes so discordant, that a well placed jump scare would have been enough to give me a heart attack. Unfortunately, when the horror does start it's fumbled so badly that it loses all impact.

There is exactly one actor with a shred of talent in this film. Her overacting is especially noticeable in a scene where she's talking to some hospital staff and the doctor has no idea what he's meant to be doing so he keeps staring off into the ceiling. She's clearly trying to take the film seriously despite the fact no one else is.

Hikiko starts tormenting the girls, but overdoes it to the point it looks like she's more interested in groping them than killing them. Hikiko forcing one of her victims to stab herself with a pencil loses all impact when the effect is so badly done that you're not sure what's happening. And then the flashbacks start.

As soon as the trauma of ten years past begins it becomes clear that I've made a mistake regarding this movie. It's not a horror, it's a comedy! Hikiko grabs a kid and starts slamming him against the pavement, and it's hilarious. The scene was meant to be scary but I couldn't stop laughing.

Soon after, Hikiko chases her victim into the abandoned part of the hospital, where like any sensible horror heroine, the girl that's running from a ghost stops to ask the creepy woman locked in a cage for help. Genius. Hikiko appears and the girl presses herself against the cage, whereupon the Onna kill-steals and Hikiko fades away with a bored look on her face.

The Onna accidently gets set free and proceeds to actually do something, making it look like Hikiko is the reason the movie lacks horror. For a moment, it looks like the Onna actually knows how to get things done.

 Epic Troll Face.

Things then pile together to lead to probably the shortest Vs match on record. Like a pro-boxer vs a wet paper bag. The whole fight is a farce, but it is an incredible funny farce. Every time one of the ghost comes running up to attack the victims, they stop a short distance away as if to say "Hi".

The ending has got to be one of the best I've ever seen though. The main character pulls an incredible stupid stunt in the hopes of vanquishing the evil monster, and for a few seconds it looks like it worked, until they look up to find the monster giving a face that screams "Are you an idiot?".

Overall:

As a horror this movie is an offense, but as a comedy it's a right barrel of laughs. I'd recommend it purely to see how funny it really is. I don't think you'd even need subs to enjoy it (probably would make more sense too). 

Stats:

Watched: RAW

Understood: Yes

Does it matter: No

Would watch again: Probably not

Recommend: Yes

Rating: Bad but Good

Amazon Link 

Bonus:
Hikiko drinking game!
Take a drink every time Hikiko fails at being scary.

Introduction

Hello,

I'm an Australian living in Japan. I love watching movies. It's interesting to watch some of the movies that really only exist here in Japan. Wherever I go, I'm always finding interesting movies. Japanese video stores are strange though, they keep the obviously D-grade movies right up there with the A-listers. It's impossible to tell what kind of movie you'll get until you watch it. So, I thought it would be fun to start doing reviews of some of films I find.

Welcome to Fushigna Eigakan!


こんにちは、

私は日本で住んでるオーストラリア人だよ。映画を観る事が大好きだ。外国が無い邦画はいつも面白そうだ。どこにも新しい映画を見つかる。日本のビデオ屋は不思議な所だな。偽者の映画と本物の映画は全然混じってしまった事だ。観るときまでどんな映画を手に入ったは不思議な謎だよ。だから見つかった物をレビューしたいと思う。

不思議な映画館へようこそ！