Horror Challenge entry #8: Marebito (2004, Takashi Shimizu)
Is Shimizu a protege of Shinya Tsukamoto? If so, that would explain a lot about his filmmaking. Tsukamoto stars in this film that Shimizu knocked out between Grudge franchise entries, and his particular brand of vaguely meaningful incoherence is all over this tale of a freelance photographer who descends into an underground world and comes back with… something. I’d lay the blame on Shinya except that the Grudge films also traffic in vaguely meaningful incoherence, as if everything will make subconscious sense if you just throw out enough spooky signifiers and tenuous connections, so I’d say it’s more of a meeting of similar minds. But while The Grudge is pared down until there’s nothing left but ghostly imagery, Marebito has so many shards of ideas in its head that it can’t keep it all straight and ends up doing a disservice to everything it tries to do: It’s a meditation on cinema versus reality! It’s a meta-horror film about what it means to be frightened! It’s a descent-into-madness narrative! It’s a wriggling mass of references to other works, from Lovecraft to The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser to Peeping Tom to (no joke) The Little Shop of Horrors! It’s all of that AT THE SAME TIME!!!! All that, and it still adds up to zilch. I think I’m done with Shimizu, frankly.
