Japanese filmmaker Kôji Shiraishi knows his way around a haunt, having established a reputation for scare crafting with documentary-style horror movies Noroi: The Curse, Occult, and A Record of Sweet Murder. The director occasionally showcased his sense of humor, dialing up the camp factor in commercial films like Sadako vs. Kayako. Kôji Shiraishi’s latest, House of Sayuri, splits the difference between serious scares and irreverent horror-comedy. A vengeful ghost doles out shocking violence in this haunted house, with a comically combative grandma standing in its way, making for a tonally disjointed effort as bizarre as that setup suggests.
After a cold open that establishes the haunting’s inciting event, House of Sayuri cuts to the present to introduce the Kamiki family, a tight-knit and cheerful group of seven who’ve just moved into the home, blissfully unaware of its history. The new home comes after years of blood, sweat, and tears from Dad Akio (Zen Kajihara), and it represents the fulfillment of a dream for their family, one meant to bring happiness and vitality. Instead, their house comes with the wrathful ghost of a little girl who wastes no time in disrupting the Kamikis’ happiness.
The ghost then quickly escalates the typical haunted house frights, picking the family off one by one until the Kamikis’ dementia-ridden grandma Harue (Toshie Negishi, Audition) becomes lucid again and enlists eldest son Norio (Ryoka Minamide) to protect Akio’s dream.
Shiraishi, who adapts Rensuke Oshikiri‘s Sayuri manga with co-writer Mari Asato (Fatal Frame, Ju-on: Black Ghost), touches on the familiar earmarks of J-horror ghost stories to acknowledge the tropes before shattering them. The vengeful spirit often assumes the appearance of a long-haired girl in a white dress, making eerie clicking sounds when she’s not giggling at the torment she inflicts. Norio’s schoolmate turned love interest, Nao Sumida (Hana Kondo), serves as the psychically sensitive type and may offer a critical key in unlocking the house of horror’s mysteries. Shiraishi touches on all of the trappings in quick succession, then quickly sets about dismantling them at every turn. That begins with the introduction of Sayuri, a wholly different depiction of a J-horror ghost, and continues to build with Shiraishi’s demented dispatching of the Kamikis, sometimes in quick succession.
It’s a rare haunted house story with bucket loads of arterial spray.
Only when Harue suddenly snaps into lucidity does the seemingly serious haunted house story drop the façade and lean into slapstick. The grandma transforms from sweet but disoriented into butt-kicking hippie. She’s not letting this extremely powerful ghost claim everything from her without a fight, and she’s teaching the new generation to fight back, too, in grandson Norio. Harue symbolizes Shiraishi’s quest to shake up J-horror’s reputation and legacy. Foundational J-horror films like Ring, Ju-On, and Pulse set the blueprint, introducing inescapable horrors that always triumphed over the protagonists. There’s no outsmarting or evading Sadako or Kayako, leaving optimism in short supply. Shiraishi seeks to untangle that pervading sense of bleakness from J-horror’s legacy here and, through Harue, does so with amused defiance.
As entertaining as the subversion can be in action, it doesn’t always work. Trying to mesh the conventional haunted house elements with the deconstruction creates tonal whiplash, as emotional beats bump into wacky splatstick with a confusing thud. It becomes even murkier when the third act reveals the full truth behind the haunting, mining good-for-her laughs from a rather sensitive subject matter. It’s Shiraishi’s point; the filmmaker is intentionally attempting to dislodge J-horror from nihilism’s grasp. But its execution lacks the cohesion or fluidity to fully pull it off without leaving the viewer unsure about tonal intent in a film that constantly alternates between tragedy, comedy, and horror.
Luckily, that also means that House of Sayuri is never boring. What starts as a family haunted house story derails into a funhouse of horrors, where the high body count is as delightful as the playful attempts to shake up J-horror tropes. Shiraishi combines convention with his distinct brand of horror and horror imagery, creating a bold new take on supernatural revenge. Even if the tonal whiplash confuses, House of Sayuri entertains for its commitment to bloodshed for humor’s sake and its unrelenting pursuit to infuse J-horror with amusement and joy.
House of Sayuri screened at Fantasia Fest. Release info TBA.
The post ‘House of Sayuri’ Review – Kôji Shiraishi’s Comedic Reclamation of J-Horror’s Bleak Legacy appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.