MAREBITO
ABOUT THE MOVIE

- NIL


Genre: Horror
Starring:
Shinya TSUKAMOTO, Tomomi MIYASHITA, Kazuhiro NAKAHARA, Miho NINAGAWA
Director:
Takashi Shimizu
Rating: NC-16 ((Some Disturbing Elements)
Year Made: 2004

Languages: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 Widescreen
Sound: Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0
Running Time: 1 hr 32 mins
Region Code: 3
Distributor: Comstar Home Entertainment

 

SPECIAL FEATURES
 
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

 

 

SYNOPSIS:

Masuoka is a cameraman possessed by the craving to understand fear – what it is and where it ultimately leads. He wanders the Tokyo streets, a voyeur, hungrily looking for clues. Obsessing over the haunted expressions of the faces he has captured in his daily filming, in particular a man who committed a grisly suicide on the metro.
He returns to the scene to better comprehend the dead man’s reasoning. Following his final gaze leads Masuoka to a door, an entry into a bizarre, cavernous underworld. Here among the ghosts and the subterranean robots called DERO's he finds a beautiful young girl chained to a rock. Saving her from her imprisonment, he takes her home.
But watching her from his web-cam at work each day he begins to suspect there is something truly inhuman about this girl with sharp teeth and who walks on all fours. When he begins to uncover her horrifying secrets Masuoka realises that he has found the key to gaining the terrible knowledge he so craves. From the director of the cult hit Ju-On (The Grudge)

MOVIE REVIEW :

The Japanese are famed for having churned out a number of sappy romantic dramas that have caused the surge in the sales of tissue boxes. They’re also famed for being the land which has brought out the worse fears in people with their own brand of horror and now for Hollywood to remake. For the uninitiated, Japan is also fast becoming a haven for the weird and the bizarre; Marebito is proof of that.

If you had an itch, would you scratch till it goes away, kill the mosquito or allow it to feast on your flesh further? The protagonist in Marebito, Masuoka, chose the last option. After watching a man commit suicide in the subway, Masuoka is left curious by what the man saw upon his death. In an unprecedented move, Masuoka decides to discover what kind of fear can lead a man to kill himself. And as with every movie of the horror genre, (again, that’s a fine line for this movie) curiosity is a no-no and that could only lead to more trouble.

In Marebito’s case, curiosity is what carries the movie and it is also the movie’s downfall. From this point onwards, the movie carousels into the netherworld, quite literally. Masuoka discovers the existence of detrimental robots called DERO’s inhabiting the underworld. This is in relation to Richard Shaver, who in the 1940’s theorized that our world was filled with huge cavernous undergrounds which were home to evil dwarves called dero. While it gave the characters the opportunity to wax philosophical about the unknown, it lost me right about here. And it did not help either that the whole underworld saga draws parallels to Neil Gaiman’s novel, Neverwhere. I sure hope they didn’t use Gaiman’s material as reference.

The story picks up when Masuoka discovers a young girl, unclothed and chained to a rock. He takes her home and starts to observe her. The girl strangely enough begins to walk on all fours and there are hints of a master/pet relationship. When the girl refuses to eat or drink, Masuoka soon discovers her true craving and soon enough, the movie ventures into voyeuristic experiences of sadism. One craving leads to another and Masuoka soon realizes the horrible truth behind the fear he so desires to understand.

Marebito is not the usual fare to be watched with popcorn and coke. If you’re up for something different and morbid, you could try picking this one up. Otherwise, I’d suggest putting more butter on your popcorn.

SPECIAL FEATURES :

There are no special features on this Code 3 DVD and that’s a good thing. At the end of the movie, I had lost my stomach to even find out what the makers actually had in mind with this.

AUDIO:

The DVD comes in Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0.

VISUAL:

The movie starts off with gritty camerawork similar to the like of The Blair Witch Project. The movie switches between this style and that of a normal camera. While this helps to fit the voyeuristic mood of the movie, the results appear dizzying.
Otherwise, the earlier half of the movie is filled with bluish hues as Masuoka seeks to find out the truth behind the fear. The later parts of the movie are filled with different shades of red to suit both the transformation and degeneration of a man.

MOVIE RATING:
(Japanese pulp fiction that is only for those up for a night of morbidity)



DVD RATING:



Review by Mohamad Shaifulbahri


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This review is made possible with the kind support from Comstar Home Entertainment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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