Director: Takashi Shimizu
Starring: Shinya Tsukamoto, Tomomi Miyashita, Kazuhiro Nakahara, Miho Ninagawa, Shun Sugata

- Reviewed by Linda

While watching Marebito, I found myself wondering why I was there. It was late Sunday night (a school night!), the film had started almost 45 minutes late, and I was sitting there watching a feral woman on screen sucking on a baby bottle full of human blood. No, not sucking... slurping. Slurping on the nipple, clutching the bottle with her two paws... I mean hands... while a man (her keeper) watched with quiet fascination and satisfaction.

I had bought the ticket because I thought I enjoyed Japanese horror, but watching Marebito made me question that. What the hell was I doing there? I had better things to do, like, you know, sleep.

Masuoka (bland Shinya Tsukamoto) is an emotionless man fascinated with the idea of fear. Not just fear, but fears that paralyzes you, that causes you to stick a knife through your eye. Masuoka witnesses a man do just that in a subway station, and happens to have a video of it, so he (along with us) can watch the knife go in over and over. I was loving this movie already.

He decides to go search through the underground of Tokyo, digital video camera in hand, to find what down there caused this man to lose his mind. Now, this underground is one of those places with long, dark, endless corridors, spiraling staircases, and white-skinned bald people crawling around on all fours. When Masuoka goes through a passageway and stumbles upon a mountain vista ("The Mountains of Madness!" he exclaims), I sat there wondering if he really believed that the poor matte painting was supposed to be real. But while down there, he comes across a beautiful naked young woman with pointy teeth who is chained by the ankle in a cave. The perfect pet! With absolutely no transition, he and his new pet woman are suddenly back in his apartment and he is trying to figure out what her tastes in kibbles are.

You can see it coming a mile away. When Masuoka accidentally cuts his hand, we are treated to her lovingly lapping and sucking at his wound, the first of many unbearably slurpy scenes. Masuoka has to figure out how to keep the woman's appetite satiated, and comes up with a few creative ways that should have had me running for the exit. I'm not sure why I sit through crap like this. I have a stubborn movie-going ethic of not walking out on a movie if I went to it on purpose.

Anyways. Marebito, I figured, was going for something more lofty and philosophical than your standard horror movie. At least I suppose that is what was going on, with Masuoka narrating his cold point of view, with his clinical observations of the human condition which he didn't seem to share. I'm sure it was using its story as a metaphor, and threw in a sort of Twilight-Zone-y ending that had me shrugging, "Huh."

Masuoka finds his poke-a-knife-in-the-eye fear by the end, don't worry, but it is totally anti-climatic. Worth sitting through? Nyet. Now I just need to see a GOOD Asian horror movie, soon, to wash the taste of this one out of my mouth. [wiping blood from my lips]

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