Popular reviews

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  Review by brat pacino ★★★½ 5

  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 🤷🏻‍♀️

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 5

  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…

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  Review by Freyr ★★★★★ 10

  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.…

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  Review by Ben ★★★★ 2

  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…

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  Review by WraithApe ★★★½

  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…

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  Review by YI JIAN ★★★★ 1

  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…

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  Review by pd187 ★★★ 1

  "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."

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  Review by HorrorSage ★★★★ 2

  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…

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  Review by cameron fetter ★★★★

  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

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  Review by Lee 💫HEAVEN SURROUNDS US LIKE A HOOD 💫 ★★★★★

  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

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  Review by GoodBadMovies ★★★★ 9

  SHOCKTOBER #4

  Der freiberufliche Kameramann Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto) geht der Spur eines Suizides nach und entdeckt dabei ein unterirdisches Tunnelsystem unter der Stadt Tokio. Dort findet er bald ein großes Tal mit einer Felslandschaft und eine junge stumme Frau, die nackt an einen Felsen gekettet ist. Masuoko beschließt sie mit zu sich nach Hause zu nehmen. Doch die junge Frau, die Masuoko nur F nennt, wird immer schwächer, verhält sich merkwürdig, trinkt nicht, isst nicht und schläft fast den ganzen Tag. Masuoka muss bald feststellen, dass er sich in tiefe Abgründe bewegen muss, um ihr zu helfen...

  Mit "Marebito" liefert Regisseur Takashi Shimizu, der kurz zuvor durch "Yu-On" bekannt wurde, ein recht günstig produziertes, Lovecraft-inspiriertes, schauriges Mystery-Drama ab, dass nicht…

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  Review by Fake Shemp

  You know when you forget how creepy some movies are cause they've sat on your shelf for years without a repeat viewing? That.