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Review
by
Doug Red
Film:3
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DVD:7
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Young filmmakers Ai (Chisato Morishita) and Maki (Yoko Mitsuya)
come across a great plot for their next independent film. They
uncover footage made years before by another group of amateur
filmmakers (called a "movie club" in the subtitles) based around
an infamous Noh play. The legendary plot of the play concerns
a demon that falls in love with a mortal and the bloody havoc
such a love creates; the kind of deadly shenanigans that don't
look good for the tourist industry and is bad for morale. This
earlier film Ai and Maki found was never made available to the
public, but the rumor that still persist seven years after its
production is that one of the filmmakers wound up in an insane
asylum, and another disappeared off the face of the earth. The
uncovered footage makes a convincing argument that the demonic
Noh-masked performer actually killed their pretend victim. So
Ai and Maki do what most law-abiding people would do in a similar
situation, they take the footage straight to the police… actually,
this is a horror film, of course they don't take the footage to
the cops. Instead, Maki and Ai coax some frenemies, snotty rich
girl Natsuki (Yuko Kurosawa) and her pals, the upbeat Yuka (Yukari
Fukui) and quiet put-upon Yayoi (Keiko Saito) to take part in
filming under the pretense that it's going to be a glamorous romance.
Once they arrive at the remote lodge they're going to film at,
known as Yuai House, Ai and Maki reveal that it is the same setting
as the earlier cursed film, and that they also plan to exploit
the reputation of the earlier shoot in order to make their magnum
opus of terror. Before you can say "Camp Crystal Lake", however,
women begin to disappear and the whole shoot begins to become
a self-fulfilling prophecy of murder and, strangely, love. |
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Director
Yoichi Nishiyama's 2005 film Gurozuka
does a few things right to begin with. First off, the cast is
completely female, and they are all cuties. The setting is rich
with portent. (Was there a murder in the past? Is
there a real demon behind the ancient Noh drama?) The Noh mask
is creepy in the context of it being worn while stalking victims
and any scenes involving it and the demon or slasher behind it
are well done visually. There are also a number of allusions to
a previous Japanese horror that I really enjoy, Nobuhiko Ohbayashi's
1977 crazy-town child's nightmare of a horror film Hausu
(House). Both films involve a group of girls traveling
to the countryside where they stay at a dilapidated house, people
are killed in unique ways, and Japanese folklore is used to pin
the narrative down. The house in Gurozuka
is even occasionally filmed as if it is dominating a natural ridge
just like the classic creepy manor of Hausu.
There is also use of a concept more fully explored in Hideo Nakata's
1998 J-horror classic Ringu, which
is the idea of a cursed video that can exert an unholy power on
anyone viewing it. |
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Even
with promising threads of plot and visuals, Gurozuka
is ultimately a frustrating watch because for every one thing
it succeeds at, it does four things in a lackluster or pedestrian
way, failing to deliver scares or sufficient gloomy haunted imagery
for most of the running time. Mostly the main characters are walking
around and talking in the manner of a mild dramatic relationship
film, with the filmmakers taking their time with revealing any
of the scares as they try to ensure their cast doesn't leave once
they find out they are expected to take part in a horror film
instead of romance. Such tedium is relieved only by various domestic
squabbles as their stash of food disappears and their only ride
out of the countryside leaves the area. Sprinkled throughout the
storyline are glimpses of broader characterizations and motivations,
such as multiple accusations of lesbian love amongst various women
in the group, or grudges remaining from school days, or the less
popular girls disliking the more popular ones, but these never
really go anywhere. While this could have been presented in a
way to either develop tension or enrich the characters, Gurozuka
succeeds at neither, leaving the film with about 15 minutes worth
of interesting story surrounded by an hour or so of lackluster
filmmaking. Maybe that is why it took it seven years to get released
to America; even with some effective parts, it's just not that
good. |
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| Gurozuka
is released by Synapse Films as part of their Asian Cult Cinema
Collection. The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen
1.85:1; the audio option is Japanese 2.0 Stereo with English subtitles.
Both are crisp and modern, though in keeping with the bland nature
of the film, the lighting and camerawork of Gurozuka
isn't particularly compelling. |
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Of
interest to J-Horror aficianados will be the 23-minute 'making-of'
featurette included on the disc. It appears to be ported over
directly from the Japanese market (also in Japanese with English
subtitles), and thus the view of making the film and the direction
and style of the documentary is quite different and not nearly
so stock standard as American behind-the-scenes documentaries.
All the female stars have fun personalities and much more compelling
screen presences than what comes across in the feature. Among
the revelations is the cold that spread through the cast on location
during a particularly freezing shoot, while each girl gets to
explain their character (one of the lovely ladies declares herself
a cheap date since she doesn't like sushi or steak); and there
is much to enjoy watching the cast joking around with their death
makeup or otherwise fooling around on set. It's so much fun, it
makes you wish that the film had been able to capture more of
their personality and use it for the good of the film. |
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For
the completist, the theatrical trailer is also on hand. 3/09/12 |
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