Movies: Marebito

In some ways, "Marebito," a J-horror flick from Takashi Shimizu, is the ultimate H.P. Lovecraft pastiche. One almost gets the sense that Shimizu, who filmed this movie between "Ju-On: The Grudge" and its American remake, was getting a little sick of onryō and the rest of Japanese horror conventions. Instead of young girls with long hair dressed up in white, we get a creepy suicide and an obsessed photographer. But that's just the start of the trouble here...



The film never really explains what is happening. Is this a hallucination or illusion? Is there really anything supernatural happening at all? What about the oblique references to the Hollow Earth theory and other pseudoscience? This is refreshing in the era of "twist" endings and revelations - since you're free to think what you want, the movie doesn't feel like it's pulling the wool over your eyes.

Unfortunately, the same atmospheric creepiness and existential ambiguity that make this film Lovecraftian are also matched by equally detrimental Lovecraftian elements, like the absence of anything of note happening (the trailer essentially conveys everything that happens in the movie in about a minute and a half), the monologue-y narrator-focused style, and the utter abruptness of the ending. You may feel a bit shortchanged when the credits roll, which is never pleasant.

Rating: 6/10 (7/10 if you enjoy a good Lovecraft yarn now and then)