Marebito kicked off the 'Danger After Dark' segment of the Philadelphia Film Festival tonight. I was at the first show, eagerly awaiting a new film by the director of Ju-on. In a short introduction by a festival host, i learned that the film was shot on all digital film in just 8 days immediately after filming The Grudge.
The story of Marebito is quite basic, but the delivery was sloppy at best. The film is split between clean digital film and a very dirty, grainy digital film. The grainy digital is supposed to be the main character's camera that he carries with him. Everything in the film is hand-held and although it gives the film a very realistic quality, the shaky camera gets old quickly. By the end of the film, I had the feeling that this was more of a poor student film, shot on a cheap DV camera with sloppy technique. Also, nearly all of the movie is done through voice over, which seems more than lazy.
Throughout the film, Shimizu misses many opportunities for scary moments or intriguing ideas. He has many interesting things going on like the telepathic homeless man, the Deros, the Underworld, the man on the phone, the fact that Masuoka can see the dead (sometimes? wtf?), his need to murder for 'F', the twelve seconds of missing tape, the smashed camera, the woman in the window, and the wife. However, instead of using each of these elements to their full extent, they are all abandoned in favor of showing 'F' sucking lots of blood. That's pretty much the majority of the film: watching 'F' suck blood with a voice-over. So many intriguing elements were simply forgotten by the director. When the film finally faded to black, I was highly disappointed that absolutely nothing was resolved. Overall, it seems as though this is a film that poses many questions, but offers no answers.
The story of Marebito is quite basic, but the delivery was sloppy at best. The film is split between clean digital film and a very dirty, grainy digital film. The grainy digital is supposed to be the main character's camera that he carries with him. Everything in the film is hand-held and although it gives the film a very realistic quality, the shaky camera gets old quickly. By the end of the film, I had the feeling that this was more of a poor student film, shot on a cheap DV camera with sloppy technique. Also, nearly all of the movie is done through voice over, which seems more than lazy.
Throughout the film, Shimizu misses many opportunities for scary moments or intriguing ideas. He has many interesting things going on like the telepathic homeless man, the Deros, the Underworld, the man on the phone, the fact that Masuoka can see the dead (sometimes? wtf?), his need to murder for 'F', the twelve seconds of missing tape, the smashed camera, the woman in the window, and the wife. However, instead of using each of these elements to their full extent, they are all abandoned in favor of showing 'F' sucking lots of blood. That's pretty much the majority of the film: watching 'F' suck blood with a voice-over. So many intriguing elements were simply forgotten by the director. When the film finally faded to black, I was highly disappointed that absolutely nothing was resolved. Overall, it seems as though this is a film that poses many questions, but offers no answers.