Synopsis
A fear-obsessed freelance cameraman investigates an urban legend involving mysterious spirits that haunt the subways of Tokyo.
2004 ‘稀人’ Directed by Takashi Shimizu
A fear-obsessed freelance cameraman investigates an urban legend involving mysterious spirits that haunt the subways of Tokyo.
Adness K.K. AtEntertainment K.K. Culture Publishers Japan CableCast K.K. Panorama Communications K.K. Eurospace
마레비토, Маребіто, Seres extraños, מרביתו
sometimes you are a little vampire girl having a chill time being naked and chained to a wall in the Mountains of Madness and a random guy picks you up and forces you to live in his apartment and drink his blood out of a baby bottle. we’ve all been there 🤷🏻♀️
Spooktober III: The Haunting of the Blood October
While Ju-onmay be the film that most people associate with Takashi Shimizu, I can confidently attest that it is far from his best work.
Indeed, the film's nearly glacial pacing gives the sense that you are plunging into an infinite hole of immense depression; that you, like the protagonist, are seeing your existence fade away, completely absorbed by this existential void. All of this is brilliantly captured through the acting, notably the moral and psychological decline of our protagonist. I can't say for sure if a camcoder was used, but the film's shaky, amateurish quality exacerbates the feeling of despair, and the film's closing scene was so unsettling that I had to…
After watching Bilocation with a friend last night, we had a conversation about J-Horror and what films I would recommend to him. Marebito was the first to come to mind. So I broke out the DVD (one of the few I own anymore, and probably the first I've watched in at least 2 years) and we watched it. I've seen this several times before, but it's been long enough that it felt fresh in some areas.
I simply adore this film (and thankfully he did too). It's a dense, ambitious piece of low budget film making, shot in a mere 8 days on a budget of about $40k, in between the filming of Ju-On: The Grudge and its American remake.…
Watching Shinya Tsukamoto carry a camera around, exploring the darkest corners of the world in pursuit of answers regarding fear and death is so satisfying. After a few Ju-on movies, I wasn't on the Takashi Shimizu train, as I found them to be mostly monotonous exercises that failed to sustain a chilling atmosphere. However, Marebito has me interested in continuing to work through his filmography. It's gripping from start to finish, primarily focusing on a flawed and unhinged character that's worth following if you're looking to be unsettled.
I knew Takashi Shimizu could craft a good scare and send some chills down my spine, but I needed him to manage this sense of dread for longer than a brief moment…
One of the weirder offerings from the dark continent of J-Horror that channels Lovecraft in a big way. We follow documentary maker, Masuoka, as he ventures into Tokyo's underground and records his explorations on a hand-held camera. There are a lot of ways this film could be read, from being entirely symbolic, literal or a mixture of the two. Depending on which way you go, the events that unfold would probably be more or less disturbing...
The choice to shoot in digital will put some off, but it could have been a case of needs must, given Shimizu's fairly extreme budgetary constraints. In any case, I think it works - it further blurs the division between reality and fantasy; whether…
Fear of the dark, underground tunnels, faces peeking out right as you turn your back, fear of losing direction, of trespassing into the forbidden zone, of conspiracies, of being secretly watched by unseen forces, above ground there is acute fear of urban life, strangers, being consumed by severe loneliness in an overpopulated city, then there is the universal fear of pain, death, blood, yes, a lot of blood, the oozing sound that it makes forms the majority of the film, bottles after bottles of blood thrown in a blender filling the air with the smell of iron. It is as much about embracing fear as it is about escaping it. Great atmosphere, starring Shinya Tsukamoto (!!), shot in a mere…
Good evening and welcome fellow Children of Chaos.
So I guess the Japanese were doing Mumblecore horror like a decade and a half before America.
What is here is, effectively a story about a dude who finds a vampire in the hollow earth.
So looking it up I guess Marebito means either Unique Person or Pheonimal Person. I speak fluent google. But I guess refers to someone who comes from afar to bring wisdom or enlightenment.
Which is somewhat fitting as this vampire confirms a lot of what our MC thinks about the degradation of humanity. That we were once stronger than we are. Less bringing wisdom and more confirming bias. It's like reading Buzzfeed.
So for those of you…
"among the images i captured were strange images that looked like ghosts or UFOs, things both strange and mysterious, but they mean nothing to me. probably because these things have already been defined as strange."
From the director of the Ju-On movies. Shinya Tsukamoto plays a cameraman with an obsession for finding and experiencing the ultimate 'fear' after filming a man ending his own life in a subway station.
I thought Shinya's cameraman character was supposed to be a commentary on how horror fans always try to find something scarier & more disturbing to challenge themselves. However, this cameraman ended up taking things a bit too far over the course of the story and became a danger to those around him.
The film's pacing is slow, but it does help to build up the anticipation of terror, and when the mysterious creatures start crawling out of the dark corners, they are unsettling to watch & listen to.…
very eerie and hits on all the themes that make me go "oh yeah!" like hollow earth, extradimensional lovecraftian shit, digital video being some kind of gateway to primal terror, semi found footage, a guy going crazy, and shinya tsukamoto
On the hidden depths of sadness in seeking out what is beyond humanity’s grasp; on the (non)binary of the literal image, and the subjective; on perversion and care; on the camera as truth(?); on one’s eternal hunt for ecstasy in the forbidden; thus, on the fate of the average ‘top ten mysteries’ youtuber; on getting what you wish for
The poster for this film is really quite misleading. It looks like standard lank-haired Japanese girl fare, and as it is from Takeshi Shimizu, the director of The Grudge that is probably a fair assumption.
Instead Marebito is a strange concoction that takes us below the streets of Tokyo to catacombs that teem with the dead and other, stranger denizens. This is seen through the eyes and camera of Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto) as he seeks to discover the terror that he saw in the eyes of a man whom he witnessed commit suicide.
Not only does it bear little relation to the standard J-Horror template, Marebito, in its willful strangeness and disregard for coherent narrative has more in common with…