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 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.