Review: Marebito (2004)

I first learned of the film "Marebito," a Japanese horror movie with a chilling, paranoid atmosphere, from some other Triond writers.   Postpunkpixie, for example, included this film in her article “13 Unusual Vampire Stories.”  Yawara mentions it in “The Best Asian Horror Movies of All Time.”  Intrigued, I found the film online and watched it.  Fifteen minutes into the film I understood well how the film achieved cult status after release.  After watching it, I wanted to learn more about the movie and the ideas behind it.

The Trailer

(Trailer uploaded to YouTube by asianwack)

A Bit of the Story

Masuoka is a freelance videographer who yearns to feel the fear he sees others experience.  He sees a terrified man commit suicide in the Tokyo subway and captures the scene with his camera.  Reviewing the video, Masuoka realizes the man saw something before he took his own life.  But what?  He heads to the subway station and seeks to find out.  When Masuoka steps into the subway station, he slips into an unusual mode of thought: “They [the terrified people he has seen] didn't see something that terrified them. They saw something because they were terrified.”  A homeless man he encounters in the tunnels below the subway warns him of the deros, a degenerate underground race who suck their victim’s blood.  Deep beneath Tokyo, Masuoka finds a pale, naked woman chained to the wall.  He frees her, takes her back to his apartment, and names her F.  She lives on blood.  

The Director

 

Takashi Shimizu: Clothing designed by deros?

(Photo by Saskia Batugowski via Wikimedia)

Director and fashion victim Takashi Shimizu made “Marebito” in digital video between making his movies “Ju-on: The Grudge” and “The Grudge.”  He and his crew spent eight days shooting this project.   The film cost 5 million yen, roughly $60,000, to make.  As a comparison, Ed Wood filmed “Plan 9 from Outer Space” in five days, but in 2012 dollars his budget was $135,000.  “Marebito” is a much better film than the famous Ed Wood turkey.  Since Takashi Shimizu proved with “The Grudge 2” that he could make a terrible movie for $20 million, we know his directorial talents alone can’t produce a good movie.  The leading actor and the screenwriter, Shinya Tsukamoto and Chiaki Konaka, make this film worthy of a cult following.

The Leading Actor

Takashi Shimizu has won two awards, including one for “Marebito”; on the other hand, Shinya Tsukamoto has garnered more than a dozen.  Tsukamoto is an established director of horror and science fiction in Japan, and it’s hard to imagine him taking direction from a young duffer like Shimizu.  Tsukamoto portrays Masuoka sliding down a slippery slope from a career as a videographer to a life as an obsessed outcast.  The character remains believable as he grows more and more involved with the underground world of the deros.  In a key scene where Masuoka goes to the subway to seek the deros, the hypnotized look Tsukamoto gives to his character perfectly fits a man who just threw away his Prozac to help himself focus.

The Writer

Chiaki Konaka based the screenplay for “Marebito” on his own novel of the same name.  The novel isn’t available in English.  Konaka is best known in the West as a one of the writers of “Serial Experiments Lain” and “Digimon”  He openly acknowledges his debt to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, but he borrows little from that source here.  “Marebito” draws on the world-building mythopoesis of another writer, Richard S. Shaver.

The Shaver Mystery

An American original, Richard S. Shaver sent a letter to “Amazing Stories,” a science fiction magazine, about the Mantong Alphabet, which he claimed formed the basis of the original language, a language much older than humanity.  Raymond A. Palmer, then the editor of “Amazing Stories,” asked for more information.  Shaver mailed him “A Warning for Future Man,” a lengthy article about his memories of a past life he lived thousands of years ago in a strange underground civilization.  Palmer saw value in Shaver’s work, but did not publish the article.  Instead, he turned it into the short novel “I Remember Lemuria,” which Palmer presented to his readers as a fact-based story.  The story appeared in the March 1945 issue of “Amazing Stories.”  The issue sold out.  Having tasted success, Palmer and Shaver began a long collaboration, turning out dozens of stories about what Palmer called “the Shaver Mystery.”

According to Shaver, the deros, degenerate offspring of an ancient space-going race, live in caves deep inside the Earth.  They spy on human beings, influence them with mysterious rays, and sometimes kidnap them.  These ideas reek of paranoia and delusion, and Shaver did in fact spend eight years in a mental hospital before he contacted Palmer.  After publication of the first stories of the Shaver Mystery, “Amazing Stories” received numerous letters from readers who claimed to have spent time underground as prisoners of the deros.

Recommendations

I can’t predict who will enjoy a film as idiosyncratic as “Marebito.”  Nevertheless, I can identify some groups that may not like it:

• “Marebito” is rated R in the US.  The movie is not suitable for children.  They will be either frightened or bored.  Parents who allow their children to see this movie may have to answer many uncomfortable questions.
• Teenage horror fans may be disappointed with a film that relies so much on atmosphere and dramatic tension.  The ending of the movie may not satisfy them.
• Those who can't bear to watch a film with a few plot holes will hate "Marebito."  For example, exactly how do you sneak a naked woman out of the Tokyo subway system?  The film skips over this detail.
• The film is in Japanese with subtitles, so those who prefer dubbed or English-language films should avoid it.
• In Japanese folklore a marebito is a divine being who arrives in a village bearing gifts.  “Marebito” makes little use of this bit of folklore.  Indeed, the film is “not Japanese enough” for some purists, who insist the Japanese films they view not draw on the culture of other countries.

“Marebito” is an atmospheric horror-thriller.  Movie buffs who enjoy puzzling out mysterious and understated films will love it.  Adults who regularly watch art house films or who are fascinated by Richard S. Shaver or who appreciate Shinya Tsukanoto will want to own it.

A version of this article originally appeared on Triond's Cinemaroll website:
http://cinemaroll.com/action/review-marebito-2004/


Text of "Review: Marebito (2004)" by Mark Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.