Evil Dead Trap (1988)

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Director: Toshiharu Ikeda

Screenplay: Takashi Ishii

Cast: Miyuki Ono as Nami Tsuchiya; Yuji Honma as Daisuke Muraki; Hitomi Kobayashi as Rei Sugiura; Shinsuke Shimada as the TV producer; Aya Katsuragi as Masako Abe; Masahiko Abe as Akio Kondou; Eriko Nakagawa as Rya Kawamura

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #120

Contrary to one piece of review blurb on the DVD I viewed, this isn't a mix of David Cronenberg with Dario Argento. It's however something distinct even if the result suffers from significant pacing issues, a great example of the idiosyncratic nature of Japanese horror cinema even when its less than perfect. When it's not the default "J-Horror" tag of the post-Ringu (1998) films which were herded into that name in the West, but an example of the weird cross pollinations of sub-genres that take place in the area. This one in particular is a hybrid of a slasher film and full blown weird body horror that even exhibits a proto-Saw (2004) vibe decades before. All of this is drenched in a dank atmosphere and openly embracing violence for the sake of violence, something which when ingested can have a potent surprise for the viewer even in there's some absurdity to it too. The first half is an exaggeration of the slasher film, pushed to its most lurid extreme, when a female presenter of a late night television show, and (mainly female) production staff go to a place identical to what appears to be a snuff film sent to her television studio. The result's a distillation of the slasher with pretence, a series of characters bumped off gruesomely without the contrivances of the American template of the slasher film and a greater sense of the visceral to the proceedings.

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Whether it's a good thing to enjoy this nasty tone or not is to debate, as its not horror in a scary way but going directly to the viewer's stomach for shock as a splatter film. Splatter films are a curious concept - the relishing of gore and death sometimes with an elaborate plot or the basics of one - all fake viscera in the end, Evil Dead Trap feeling even grubbier than others down to its more dirty looking locations and slower pace. (Not to mention the snuff film that begins the plot, including surprisingly realistic eyeball trauma). It's entirely up to individual viewers whether the first half of the film is entertaining or just too filthy in tone for them. It does step into the realms of bad taste when a random figure - a man driven made by his girlfriend dying and wandering the killer's lot - (attempts?) to rape a female character, pointless especially as they both die, one through metal wire noose, and is the one scene in the whole of Evil Dead Trap that I could've lived without. The film's pace is definitely an issue, messy in terms of its shifts and a structure whose attempt to juggle multiple genres becomes convoluted. Thankfully, when it reaches the halfway point when most of the cast is already dead and we're left with the female protagonist, things become much more interesting and weird as it has to attempt to make sense of its various plot threads. With only two characters to follow for the most part, including a mysterious man with a lighter helping the lead, it allows the real virtue of the film to stand out, that of its atmosphere and production design.

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There's a vast difference between average background sets of grubby urban and industrial environments in a lot of Western horror cinema compared to those in Japanese horror cinema, where even a backyard with more weeds than grass manages to have more personality. As much of it is a personal bias, from watching so many Japanese films, having led to a legitimate fascination with both Japanese architecture and mundane environments in the country, the public building corridor from offices to high schools being fully burnt in my brain from anime to live action and causing me to pick up little details like the posters on the walls to how the colour white is even more prominent than even in my homeland. But there's distinctly something in how space and environment has always stood out in Japanese cinema, classics to cult films, how it's even down to the type of film cameras used compared to Western movies and how environments stand out, how colour and the lack of it amongst other details even sticks out in trashy, digitally shot flicks. Evil Dead Trap gets significantly more stylish as it goes along. Beginning with an abandoned school, full of death-traps and drops to the bowls of the earth, to the heroine entering a netherrealm of warehouse space and subterranean passages, it eventually in the finale becomes openly artificial and artistic with medical drawings on the walls and violently hued coloured lighting.

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Eventually, whilst it feels like half the film is in a complete struggle with finding its own tone, Evil Dead Trap does eventually have reward. It's surprising there are hiccups at first especially as the screenwriter is Takashi Ishii, a screenwriter and manga author whose directorial work for cinema (from Gonin (1995) to Freezer (2000)) I've been a fan of for years especially for the sense of greater thought he has to lurid genre tropes. This feels like a film that, as you watch, only starts to get to a perfect tone when it ditches the slasher tropes and fully embraces the illogical. It gladly embraces its greasy tone but, after initially becoming too repugnant briefly, it instead suits the material when the more atmospheric, slow burn structure takes over fully. The material that predates the Saw films, whilst brief, really stands out in a scene involving a crossbow connected to the door, ultimately alongside the traps an unexplained side of the story but part of the general tone of unpredictability Evil Dead Trap has. When the film reaches its conclusion, the unexpected tangent into body horror is abrupt but does put a cherry on the cake in terms of a film which is pretty shaky at first but manages to grab hold onto something much more interesting as it goes along. I admit that initially after seeing the film, one which I had waited years in excitement to see, I was a little disappointed but that doesn't mean it's worthless. On the contrary its definitely of reward, just if bear in mind its flaws. Of course for me as well, its sequel which gets set up in the finale, took an entirely different direction and is immediately tantalising with anime screenwriter Chiaki J Konaka penning the material, so that more than makes the viewing of the original film more than rewarding.

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