So, I was recommended a movie after begging around for Japanese horror movies to watch and kid myself I was studying. I went in knowing absolutely nothing about it apart from what I could deduce from its cover:

I assumed it would be the typical Japanese horror movie, which apart from the obvious cultural differences when it comes to the bad guys, is not too dissimilar to the typical Western horror movie (except maybe that Japanese ones tend to focus on characters that are twenty-somethings, rather than teenagers being played by twenty-somethings.)

It's not typical. It's... well. I don't have an adjective. I am lost for adjectives.

I guess all I can say is that it was my kind of movie. I don't like overly serious horror. In any 'dark' genre, I think the creator has to be careful to balance out that darkness somehow. Any hack with psychiatric issues can wallow in pain and angst; creating something more well-roundedly effective is what's rare. (I will probably write more about this later with reference to Tarantino movies.) In a genre as dark as horror (blood! death! screaming!), comedy can be a good way of doing this.

Which is why I like and appreciate, say, Return of the Living Dead over its alternate sequels, Day of the Dead or Dawn of the Dead. The mix of humor in ROTLD somehow heightens the emotion and gets the viewer more involved, rather than canceling out the horror element, as one might expect. The comedy often actually makes the horror part more scary - for me, anyway. The balance means that there's less of that uncomfortable distance that you can get with the 'I'm watching a psychopath's fantasy on screen'-style horror movie.

And Hausu was another great example of this, the comedy element being even stronger than in ROTLD. I didn't get that 'psychopath' feeling at all in Hausu. I got raw, innocent, artistic expression and it was damn interesting. (And there was at least one scene that pretty much scarred me for life. But in a good way.)

If you have even the slightest interest in Japanese horror, you should see this movie. If you are very interested in the horror genre, or in Japan in general, I strongly recommend that you see this movie. If I had a friend that was in a tragic car accident that wiped out all his memories of Japan and of anything vaguely related to Japan, and he asked me "Hey, what's the deal with Japan?" I would make him sit down and watch this movie. And at the end he would nod and say "I see."


(Note: If you do ever decide to watch Hausu, I recommend obtaining it without watching the trailer beforehand. I was going to link it here, but it's one of those annoying trailers that basically ruins all the good bits. The less you know about this movie going in, the better.)