Marebito (2004)

 

Director: Takashi Shimizu

Screenplay: Takashi Shimizu and Chiaki Konaka

Cast: Shinya Tsukamoto as Masuoka, Tomomi Miyashita as F, Kazuhiro Nakahara as Arei Furoki, Miho Ninagawa as Aya Fukumoto, Shun Sugata as MIB

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Director Shinya Tsukamoto steps in and stars in another's films, that of director Takashi Shimizu. I can see why he brought his talent as an onscreen actor from his own films, a digitally shot horror film with a very idiosyncratic tone. Tsukamoto is Masuoka, a cameraman obsessed with the lives of others, from possible drug addicts living in the building next to his to the catalyst of the tale, a freak subway suicide he caught on tape during his work as a documentary cameraman, part of his desire to capture the fear of those who die may feel. The suicide he caught on camera on camera is not what one would presume, but a random older man stabbing himself in the eye on camera. Strange visions from rewatching this footage and ruminating on its meaning lead to Masuoka returning back to the site he filmed the suicide at and to a small crawlspace that leads into the underground.  

The resulting film is a slow burn which takes plot strands which you would presume would go in an obvious direction, only to confound them. A notable aspect to this, alongside director/co-writer Shimizu co-writer Chiaki Konaka, who I have kept up with and is a very idiosyncratic voice in his own right. I have had to put a hesitance in my respect for him in case he took the conspiracy theories he has touched upon in his work seriously, infamously creating a villain in a radio play for the Digimon anime franchise which was a physical manifestation of "political correctness", one that used "cancel culture" as an attack¹. When that happened in 2021, people learnt that his blog writings revealed to be interested in such conspiracies¹ in a time, especially in the West, where conspiracy theories have no longer stayed the likes of Area 51 but insidious ones of far-right ideologies which have been allowed to bleed into other conspiracy theories and corrupted the concept. This is something I have to be cagey about, unless it is revealed more to this contextually was lost or he apologises, as Chiaki Konaka is a very distinct writing voice I wish has not been lost in bad ideologies and just bad ideas. He only has a few live action films, and most of his career is in Japanese anime, where very idiosyncratic titles of note like Serial Experiments Lain, a 1998 TV animated series, present such idiosyncratic takes on plotting, on realities bleeding into each other, and references to culture which you find here in Marebito alongside Takashi Shimizu's collaborations.

The title is a clear nod to the references in itself, "marebito" a Japanese concept of spirits or divine beings briefly leaving the afterlife to visit the living world, which happens here explicitly just in how the older man who committed suicide will visit Masuoka. He is part of the elaborate bows around this movie's key storyline, that Masuoka will find a nude woman in this underground world through the subway station, chained to a rock, who he will take up to the surface, christening her "F" (Tomomi Miyashita). She will not eat or drink, but he soon learns she likes the taste of blood, especially human, but Marebito takes unexpected directions in the best of ways. For starters, the underground section before we meet F is distinct, Masuoka finding himself in complex tunnels built in World War II and older, where homeless people there can read your narration monologues and the dead walk, the suicidal man greeting Masuoka, and discussing the differences between the hollow earth theory and that of complex tunnels which he thinks is more legitimate. Konaka's finger prints are all over the references in this, from Madame Blavatsky to the christened F being called Masuoka's Kasper Hauser, in mind to the real figure, a 19th century German youth who was said have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell, and the subject of Werner Herzog's 1974 film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. F, a mute woman with Dracula-like teeth, is found in the literal mountains of madness, crystallised architecture out of Lovecraftian lore, apt as Konaka has written Cthulian Mythos works, and that there is an explicit reference to her likely being related to the "Deros". These figures wandering the place of great danger, portrayed by Butoh dancers, and are her likely kin are explicitly creations of a science fiction writer named Richard Sharpe Shaver, an American whose stories of underground cave dwelling entities called Deros which were presented to Amazing Stories magazine as real documentations of this race.

This still shows the hand of Shimizu as well, the opaque tone of Marebito created between the two writers one of its best aspects, where even when it plays with the idea this is all Masuoka's sanity collapsing, it confounds this. It never goes for the obvious, which presents a far more appropriately eerie tone for horror storytelling, where the unknown in the plot, the completely unexplained, is more terrifying. It is very different horror film in general, with the literary and mystical references. Even when an obvious plot thread comes ahead, Masuoka killing people to feed F as he comes to love her in a weird daughter/lover/pet relationship, it undercuts this on purpose when other films could drag on to less interesting escalations. In terms of the central production,

Tsukamoto is not a case of a director who narcissistically puts himself in central roles in his own films, but part of both the collaborative nature of said films, starting his career in a theatrical troupe whose put together his debut Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) together even if he became the auteur director, and also because he is a compelling actor in his own right. It is fascinating when he appears in others' films, just memorable in Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer (2001), and here he fits this role of a small man with a strange obsession as comfortable as ones from his own films like Bullet Ballet (1998), about his character crafting a handmade firearm in mourning of a loved one's suicide and a fixation on destruction through guns. Here, what could become a simple horror premise, which could have still been fun, becomes compelling by both the dreamlike logic and Tsukamoto's committed performance for a character obsessed with fear. Credit also has to be made, in terms of performance, for Tomomi Miyashita as F. Early in her career, which contains many tokusatsu works like multiple roles in the Ultraman franchise coming later on, there is the clear sense she has a dance background as her performance, mostly without dialogue having to convey F in only entirely movements. Bravely introduced contrasting her physical beauty against the violence of her bruised leg chained to a wall, she contrasts explicit sensuality in the characterisation against animalism, cat-like moments around an apartment which uncomfortable contrasts, of an animal which consumes blood against a sensuality, the uncomfortable schism of beastly violence and even bestiality against lust and love. Her performance is just as important and good, and it is a shame there are less prominent roles in her filmography.

Marebito never takes the expected route, and even when it hints at this all being in Masuoka's head, that within itself is a rug pull moment in an interesting twist, an existential tangent contemplating the scenario at the coast with a dead man as a thoughtful conversationalist. Chiaki Konaka has left many of his stories in animation ambivalent on the reality, not always metaphorical but literally with stories set in fictional stages, characters breaking through timelines, or characters becoming spiritual entities in the literal sense having been once robots that become of living flesh. It has a dream logic, which is apt and nicely contrasts the shot-on-digital realism shot on the streets. A random salary man beating Masuoka up for filming has no real story beat, but feels right for character beats instead, and simple things like a mobile phone in a back alley for Masuoka to answer is both a natural moment that feels surreal but could happen, becoming menacing for a horror story.

In the end, you can argue even if held in perpetual fear for all his life or afterlife, Masuoka could effectively have gained a happy conclusion if only filmed and chained to the same rock with F. It may seem an odd idea to view this as a happy ending, now her pet, but considering the perversity and tone of the film before, it seems credible even if a truly eerie ending as well. Obviously, you cannot ignore that, in between the filming of this film, Takashi Shimizu was building The Grudge franchise he started from his indie filmmaking era into bigger and bigger theatrical productions, cultivating a legendary horror franchise of his own creation. Making this in-between those, it is great he was also creating this unique production, but it is a film stuck within a legacy which could easily overshadow this, more so as this is a title from the Tartan Asian Extreme era of UK film distribution, the legendary sub label of a distributor that is long gone and thus lost to old DVD copies. This, especially in mind to the early digital filmmaking era of the 2000s yet to be acclaimed as a niche, is one of those little gems needing to be re-evaluated.

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1) Digimon Tamers 20th Anniversary Stage Show Features 'Cancel Culture' Villain, written by Kim Morrissy and published for Anime News Network on 4th August 2021.

The Spider Labyrinth (1988)

 

Director: Gianfranco Giagni

Screenplay: Riccardo Aragno, Tonino Cervi, Cesare Frugoni and Gianfranco Manfredi

Cast: Roland Wybenga as Professor Alan Whitmore; Paola Rinaldi as Genevieve Weiss; Margareta von Krauss as Celia Roth; Claudia Muzii as Maria

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Ragtime jazz over the opening is different for an Italian genre film, but Spider Labyrinth is an unconventional film from the era. It is an elusive film, for me a Holy Grail of the golden era of Italian horror films, one which despite being made and release in the late eighties is not pure eighties cheese in the slightest. It gets strange, lurid and bloody, but this is not the era of Bruno Mattei or cheesy hair metal music, but something else. Its director Gianfranco Giagni is not even a cult genre film director from this era, but someone who made one horror film, this as his debut, and never returned to it, which makes this fascinating if one tragically without a follow through.

This is a slow burn, in which American professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is sent to Budapest, Hungary to help with a project in Budapest, Hungary. Suspicion is felt when he is meant to meet Professor Roth, about inscriptions from 3^rd Millennium B.C. being transcribed by professors like Roth across the world, only with Roth upon being met being paranoid and talking about the titular labyrinth trapping him in its web. The black orb thrown through his window, reoccurring elsewhere, raises further concerns, and eventually Professor Roth is found dead, hung off the ceiling banisters on spider webs, which sounds the alarm bells for Whitmore.

Slow burn is apt, Spider Labyrinth taking its glacial time with a seething sense of dread to everything. Warning ahead, this is a film where the point when it gets weird also happens to reveal the secrets that the narrative builds to, hence the warning for spoilers will have to be evoked, and for some, maybe just reading this passage or so will need to be enough. Those with the patience with its slowness will be rewarded by how unexpected the twists are with it's almost Cthulian perverseness, whilst those staying on should realize this takes its sweet evil time.

For those wishing to continue with the review, our lead is sunk among a community he is separate from, and even Roth’s female assistant is a temptation for Whitmore, living over the other side from where he is staying, able to see her every night naked and undressing through the open windows. There is a building mood contrasted by an ageless and distinct atmosphere, entirely because this was shot in Budapest itself. Italy could shot their genre films in interest locations, but there were some real curiosities at this time in the later era - there is an action film called Ten Zan: Ultimate Mission (1988), for example,  shot in North Korea of all places with Mark Gregory of 1990: Bronx Warriors (1982) fame as the lead – but my mind goes to Aenigma (1987), a really lurid Lucio Fulci film from this time, tonally alien, but sharing a DNA in how being shot in Belgrade, Serbia with its drastic change in architecture and environment really adding personality.

It is among the many factors which add to this, a Gothic mood of spiral staircases and halls of white linen there for a bloody murder to stain them in the first overt horror moment. The film does eventually have gore and sex, and but this within this dread inducing environment is the slowest of burns, turning into a phantasmagorical nightmare after its sweet time, including a lengthy scene of the lead driving around Budapest which will feel long. Drip feeding the tension as a drama, most of the film is not structured as a pulp horror film for the most part, more of a psychological one. The score even starts imitating Bernard Hermann, which as this film does have people being killed in lurid ways, does show the deliberateness of this film‘s tone.

It is also at this time, a spoiler for the film has to appear again for a final time. I advise, even if the film is difficult to see, if you wish to not spoil the excitement of what happens, try to track it down with utmost recommendation from this review. It is a film which takes patience but gets very interesting, which is not even necessarily the right word to explain what happens. Those who do not mind can read on…

…the stop motion spider appears, and a film I already admired gets even more interesting as it begins to reward this patience. The horror becomes that of the “Weavers” cult being studied, which is unfortunately still existing and dangerous, and whilst it takes to develop from a mystery to this revelation, once spider people and its weirdly Lovecraftian ending transpires, it escalates. It is less cosmic tentacles, but a baby spider God with suddenly prominent practical effects and people being possessed by spiders, this jump it has been built to neither out of place nor compromised. The Spider Labyrinth goes from the same ill ease The House of Laughing Windows (1976) from Pupi Avati had, a considerable piece of praise for the film in terms of comparison, as that giallo thriller was legendary for its slow burn mood, to a level of weirdness appropriate for the late eighties Italian genre films which yet feels more disturbing for the buildup. Whether the film can work once you know the twist or not becomes subdued, thankfully, by how much mood this has and adds so much to the final production.

There is instead a further disappointment that Gianfranco Giagni went into documentaries and television work for the rest of his career, as he has a strong eye for gothic dread here just in one film. The screenwriters deserve as much praise for this film's twisted leaps in logic, with one Cesare Frugoni prolific in the likes of Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978), all of them alongside others in the film's production coming together well here. There is only the unwanted sting in wondering, with how the Italian genre film industry was to dissipate in the mid-nineties, what would have happened if Giagni had more investment to have more genre films in his career alongside what he had. The fact The Spider Labyrinth is not an easily available film is a question in itself, but this alternative world to consider is tragic too, alongside imagining everyone else outside of the director's chair, in terms of what they managed here, if horror was still a credible genre to continue into even by the Millennium.

House of Dreams (1963)

 

Director: Robert Berry

Screenplay: Robert Berry

Cast: Robert Berry, Lance Bird, Charlene Bradley, Pauline Elliott and David Goodnow

An Abstract Candidate

 

[Major Plot Spoilers]

You can encounter some truly idiosyncratic films, ones you have never heard of and have no expectations entering them, which are something to be cherished. The most rewarding, even if flawed, feel like being in the creator(s)' minds, translated onto a format of any type. Even larger budgeted productions can sometimes be like this, but the lower budgeted films are more likely to be as personal as you can achieve. House of Dreams is fascinating as, made by Robert Berry - directing, producing, editing, partly shooting and starring - it feels like the lost sibling of Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962), a revered film whilst most of us, as I was, have never heard of this film at all.

House of Dreams is a supernatural mystery, horror but not as presumed to usually mean, more a curious short tale where one man, an author entirely fixated on his work, has macabre dreams that involve a strange house, each dream revealed if by fate or a sickly reoccurring chance to chime the death of someone he knows. These dreams are never explained, and I will have to warn a potential viewer you will never have a culprit to what this all means. The dreams are merely ominous predications already adding to a man's life. There is enough to deal with, between his writer's block and his distancing relationship with his wife, a sobered alcoholic who went into a clinic for mental health, who just wants her husband to show care for her.

Here, drama's tendrils in genre are found fully. Drama is a genre which is a vague one because of how vast and varied that term can cover, on itself likely to be found in any form as much as in danger of being dismissed as really bad melodrama unfairly, as much as horror is so vast yet can be dismissed as schlock. The amount of horror and gothic stories fully of dramatic beats which are compelling show they are natural bedfellows, and even the least appropriate examples that could be conceived, such as a splatter film, are inherently enticing to me to imagine. House of Dreams fully fits a micro-budget "art horror" genre tag, one where I realise one of the things I love in films, and why drama and horror are an enticing pair, is simply that even when heavy handed, as this can be, the moment a character opens up whether about their neurosis or quirks is inherently compelling for me.

The tone of the film, and its complete lack of a conventional explanation for itself, suits this, where the first death our writer lead dreams of, in real life a car accident, just leads to a very awkward post wake meeting with the wife in a scene imbibed in late fifties and early sixties bland suburbia, the wife with a bouffant hairdo and everyone mumbling around coffees in the lounge, the kind which feels closer to real life and also inherently suits the eeriness then a conventional acting performance from the cast. Here where it is more appropriate to, with the neurosis on display, it feels stiff at points in the tone to the point of ghostliness, a film in monochrome whose almost sibling nature to Carnival of Souls feels so eerie in itself, because both films have so many common traits, both why they succeed and how they were made, which also emphasises this compelling type of horror drinking from a form of drama. Two films, just a year out of each other, shot in the early sixties shot outside of Hollywood, with Carnival of Souls was shot in Utah and Kansas, House of Dreams entirely in Indiana; Carnival...  is fixated on an amusement park for its lead's obsessions, Saltair Amusement Park near Magna in Utah used, whilst House... about the titular house the protagonist dreams of too; both have idiosyncratic scores; both are about comfortable conservative middle America of the early sixties, sedate Americana, undercut by uncomfortable emotions under the skin; both have curious acting choices and dream sequences for the leads which take very little yet cause everything to be likely to dissipate into vapour if the images were touched. [Major Spoilers] And both end with the protagonists dead, or already being dead, with epilogues where the local police have to come and clear up the tragedies. [Spoilers End]. Neither is traditional horror, though fully indebted to tropes of the genre, as they are neither traditional drama yet indebted to its tropes too.

If there is a difference, House of Dreams is a chamber drama, more so the drama, that just happens to have nightmares in their centre, preludes to deaths in car accidents or suicides. Metaphors are for cowards spoke the horror author Garth Marenghi, and honestly, I come more to the conclusion for any work that attempting to strip the unnatural and supernatural in stories down to having a hidden meaning undercuts them and is pointless. When the emotions felt by a character experiencing them, and how the viewer processes this, is weighty enough. There is also enough surrounding House of Dream just in the lives of these characters anyway, even without the protagonist's gothic nightmares in the titular house to unpack. Even without the fixation on a rundown yet haunting place in the protagonist's dreams, you have a writer struggling to write, his gothic prose full of dread and horror, with a wife felt unloved and with a fragile state of being already which, between alcohol and anxieties, she could fall prey to again as he ignores her. In little time to tell this narrative, this manages a lot in its own style.

House of Dreams is the kind of film, whilst out of the period covered, of Stephen Thrower's Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents (2007). The musician/author/commentator's book on regional horror cinema from the United States for me is a book of great reverence for, and alongside his enjoyment of the more openly pulpy side of them, he has championed idiosyncratic works of great depth, House of Dreams the kind of film this amateur writer would feel he would find so much within. Whilst feeling its incredibly low budget, production which feels like it was created with only a few people, no one with a lengthy acting career or an acting credit at all but still trying their hardest, everything that is imperfect to the film just adds to its aura, where its style is found even in having to use what was at hand. One major set, the titular house, manages to evoke a great deal before the more overt and eerie symbolism is used, and even that is based on the inherent ghostliness a person could feel wandering an abandoned house where ghosts, literal or those of another's memories gone, linger. Even a little detail like painting the film's credits around the house and its floor in the opening adds uniqueness to the production. Thankfully, the Indiana University Cinema Archive also found virtue in this film made in their state, preserving the film as part of their own cultural history. As someone who has only now heard of House of Dreams, I am happy for its preservation and for more to learn of this. It is the kind of unique film, once ultra-obscure and in some ways still is, that is a compelling discovery to find.

Abstract Spectrum: Dreamlike/Eerie

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Next of Kin (1982)

 

Director: Tony Williams

Screenplay: Michael Heath and Tony Williams

Cast: Jacki Kerin as Linda Stevens; John Jarratt as Barney; Alex Scott as Dr. Barton; Gerda Nicolson as Connie; Charles McCallum as Lance; Bernadette Gibson as Mrs. Ryan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #254

 

In Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), a documentary whose existence is arguably why the term "Ozploitation" even exists, Next of Kin even among all the films being loved in the documentary, and the variety of Australian genre films from decades before brought to light, was talked of as something different. Even among interviewees like Quentin Tarantino, this Tony Williams film was viewed as something alien to the others, a psychological thriller that was unreal and a bar in its own area of special.

The documentary was a little deceptive. I come to Next of Kin having had the anticipation of the scenes shown in the film ingrained on my memory. It is still an incredible film, but without spoiling too much, I came to this film believing this was a supernatural horror film. It is something else - a psychological horror film which, in its final twists, even gets as over-the-top as an Italian giallo. Upon the death of her mother, Linda (Jacki Kerin) inherits a working residential home that has elderly occupants and staff, and not only does the grief of losing her mother play on her mind, but Linda has weird dreams and fragments of memories returning to her the longer she is there. Something or someone is also trying to gaslight her, whether just playing with her by moving objects around or leaving bathtubs and sinks to overflow, or for more sinister purposes as she sees figures in the distances around. Neither does it help one of the residents is found drowned in a full bathtub, where even cause of death is suspicious.

The Ozploitation films covered in Not Quite Hollywood were all celebrated. Even the sillier entries were loved, and have gained cult audiences, so this review will be cautious in saying how different this film is, as I do not want to dismiss the others from that documentary, just express how unique this way. Next of Kin, not to be confused with the 1989 Next of Kin with Patrick Swayze, was sadly the last film made by Tony Williams, a New Zealand filmmaker who before and afterwards focused on television and documentaries. This is an absolute shame as it is not just the final twists which feel indebted to European genre cinema, but as an Australian set production, it feels it has swallowed the visual deliriums and tricks of European horror films too. It is a fascinating film in context, especially as a large portion of the film contrasts this with grounded ordinary Australia, which was a huge factor in the celebration of these types of Ozploitation films in the first place.

This is of a world that is not actually set in a gothic or supernatural tone¹. It as much adds to the edge of Next of Kin too, that large portions of this film are entirely set in a wholesome world, of likable and eccentric elderly residents, of an ordinary world, and a love interest that Linda can depend on to trust her when she believes something is wrong. But people are hiding secrets, an aunt of hers has presumably "died", and this wholesome world does not stop her from having weird dreams mixed with memories of herself as a girl bouncing a scarlet red ball. Even in reality, the weirdest thing about the film is not all the striking uses of distortion of corridors, but that for the bus trip out for the residents, there is inexplicably a ventriloquist hired to join them, not even a good one as he still has to move his lips to speak for the doll.

When the film starts to enter inside Linda's head, the film will introduce visual moments which are incredible, the moments which I first saw in Not Quite Hollywood, an incredible cinematic language. One of the most striking images, of a man underwater tapping a window from outside, is still incredible in context even as a dream sequence. In context in fact, such scenes gain more power as they follow Linda's psychological state including techniques such as distorting corridors with camera lenses or slow motion. The film burns with a palpable mood as a result which, even if the plot is more conventionally structure than I presumed over the years, amplifies it.

This does not even take into consideration the score by Klaus Schulze, a musician with his own prolific career but also known as the original drummer of Tangerine Dream. The prolific German electronic musician's work was not even the intended score, but the temporary soundtrack built from his pre-existing work², but they work together as a mesmerising score. Sadly, his work in cinema is limited, barring at this same period of note the Austrian film Angst (1983), which is a shame as here alone, you have music which adds to the film's grandeur.

The film's tone takes very conventional material, including what the ultimate plot twists are, and brings it up to a level of haunting virtue. This is done visually and audibly, but also in terms of the narrative motifs; water is the obsession of this film for example, making it a maleficent entity though never coming a real part of the true threat. The giallo comparison is apt as, whilst the tone feels supernatural, this is a mystery, which ends up in horror when violence does appear and is gristly.

Being able to consider Next of Kin beyond the weight of years of wanting to see the film, it has been a virtue to finally see this film, see it as a fan of Australian genre cinema, part of its heritage and a strangely unique entity even among them, but a moment to pause to think about it carefully. I also now lament its director never made films after this, but at the same time, Tony Williams pretty much puts an exclamation mark; as documented in the Not Quite Hollywood documentary, even a botched explosion set piece with a building turned, by pure accident, into a much more evocative shot. When even a mistake became part of Next of Kin's incredible virtues, we are dealing with a special horror film.  

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1) I have to love the cafe in this film, which becomes a common location, with an arcade machine and a pinball table. Even if the cheesecake nude model photos on the wall are of the time, it shows a place lost to time, with the annual books for kids and raffle prizes, which you wish still exists in the modern day.

2) As referenced in this film review.

Angel Dust (1994)

Director: Gakuryû "Sogo" Ishii

Screenplay: Yorozu Ikuta and Gakuryû "Sogo" Ishii

Cast: Kaho Minami as Setsuko Suma; Takeshi Wakamatsu as Rei Aku; Etsushi Toyokawa as Tomoo; Ryoko Takizawa  as Yuki Takei

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #178 / An Abstract List Candidate

 

With sad eyes the camel pleads, "Kill me".

The synopsis suggests a traditional murder mystery, the kind that was popular in the West as they were here in the nineties onwards. Setsuko Suma (Kaho Minami) is a forensic investigator known for her ability to enter the mind state of killers, brought in to a seemingly random series of murders of women on crowded subway trains. All clues point to her former lover Rei Aku (Takeshi Wakamatsu), a researcher in an incredibly controversial psychological practice of deprogramming religious cult members. Inherently that evokes a couple of films like Manhunter (1986) with a couple of idiosyncratic touches, but Angel Dust is something else entirely.

Within a decade, made during a ten year absence of theatrical cinema when he worked in other mediums, what a surprising change took place to Sogo "Gakuryû" Ishii, the cult director who in the the late seventies  and early eighties started off having directed punk sci-fi films like Burst City (1982) or filming Einstürzende Neubauten performances. Into the nineties here, Ishii (long before he adopted the name "Gakuryû" as he did into the 2000s) changes completely and mixes what David Fincher's Se7en (1995) wanted to do alongside the crime thriller tropes evoked in that synopsis, and turning them into this cold, glacially oppressive piece of psychological drama. Whilst Michael Mann, director of Manhunter, is cool and collected on the dangers of entering the mind of a killer, and Fincher in Se7en had a highly elaborate art style he would chip away over the decades as he evolved, Angel Dust is undeniably without ever straying in genre tropes outside of crime and murder thrillers an incredibly unsettling psychological horror film which creeps you out to the end.

A noticeable aesthetic is here. Mid nineties Japanese pulp genre film making, Japan's psycho geographical and aesthetic style as a landscape, is shown at its richest here, from the neon soaked streets to cramped and darkly lit night train rides, with brief glimmers of natural wildlife from the outside only. All of it is at ill ease, the modern environments befitting the neurosis that Angel Dust is laced in, one immediately wrong footing viewers as the first scenes are a man and a woman in the wilderness, going on an expedition deep in a cave that seemingly makes no sense to what happens in the rest of the film. The woman is Setsuko, who is assigned on a case where a figure is killing seemingly random women on crowded subway trains with a poisoned syringe of some sort. How Setsuko is even introduced, this sequence in the cave leading to the discovery of the bones of the dead, and her to be awaken from inside an isolation tank having dreamt this, immediate sets up something dreamlike in this, setting up a film just this side of psychic and supernatural inferences being involved.

Soon into the case, from one of the first victims, we are introduced to Rei, a sinister figure who worked with a murder victim of the case who was a former member of a religious cult he deprogrammed. His sinister nature is compounded by how, whoever exactly is the killer, he has an unnatural influence over Setsuko still, a command that he uses in his work and makes him an alarming candidate for the killer. Setsuko herself finds she is falling off the rails the longer she is in the mindset of this killer to try to capture them. It is, plot wise without spoiling it, a bleak film, the ending a disturbing one as control over a person psychologically, brain washing them through suggestion, even spiritual and mental poisoning, to emotional isolation taking place and leaving one  sick.

That and how Ishii, with this pulp story plot, creates the film through a sleep and quiet ill ease. Unlike Michael Mann's aesthetic, Ishii has a plot which drifts in and out of its plot, one prolonged scene an entire video of a deprogramming of a female cult member which comes off, just with words, as torture than removing superstition from them. The sound design includes of sharp noise and jolts. The film's plot for long parts of its length is seen through other forms. Recreations of the murder on a subway train with stand ins. Security footage or photographs. On screen, neon green newspaper headlines chronicling the case. Everything is cold and distant. Plot points, like Setsuko's psychological illness the longer she stays in this case, isolating herself from her loving husband, initially the safe haven from all this, are as calmly and casually dealt with as possible without great emphasis on exposition.

It is, as this genre was coming into its popularity in the nineties onwards, an incredible rebuttal to them in how subdued it is, even the murder weapon a mere needle to the breast. The one moment which feels from a more lurid film is surreal as, the killer moving away from the subways, someone finds a pair of sever hands spinning in a washing machine. It would be silly if not in context absolutely disturbing. As Setsuko starts to lose control, everything becomes more claustrophobic, with streaks of the unconventional felt throughout. Noticeably, judging from the rest of his filmography, Ishii (to the point he changed his name) took on more mystical and abstract ideas, added them to his work. Psychology fights religious superstition transpire in the background here but neither looks good, psychology here under noble ideas but able to be used as a tool of control and death however. Even if the ending should be a happy conclusion, it comes with a numbed conclusion where, unexpectedly, a recognisable Western song plays over the end credits (The Zombies' Time of the Season) which is an inspired and eerie choice. There is, as a result, the best of balances where a film heavily reliant on a plot which drags you in on twists and turns eventually leads to an emotional resonance that lingers.

And even in terms of how idiosyncratic some of the dialogue is, Angel Dust beneath its sleek and guarded veneer is splitting with strangeness. Something from within it, which breaks out when a character is locked in a room, the television with Rei on it, even in recorded footage, telling them instructions yet saying they have freewill, lurches and causes the flesh to crawl as the film takes its time to progress. It is, as mentioned, bleak and can be seen as too uncomfortable for some. How Setsuko progresses from a strong female character to the finale in itself might be too uncomfortable for some too, but everything in Angel Dust is un-remotely exploitative or cheap, but more creepy and profounder.  

Abstract Spectrum: Claustrophobic/Cold/Disturbing/Oppressive

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Petscop (2017-20)

Petscop is not a film, a television series, even a short film or a commercial. Petscop is a YouTube channel, a Let's Play of an obscure Playstation One game said to be from 1997. "Let's Plays" are videos on YouTube of people playing video games with them commenting on the material as they go along. It might sound banal, but I will admit to having watched a few even as someone who does not consider himself a videogamer. Unfortunately video games do not have as easy a system for preserving old and obscure titles from yore, even if retro gaming is popular and more are being restored, the most interesting Let's Plays for me which create a desire to start playing games again always the ones covering fascinating obscurities. Sadly most are not possible to play or (if Japanese) require you to understand the text, but witnessing them in action they shown how delving into the past and old artefacts is a compulsion regardless of medium.

Petscop, the first video released in March 2017, is an unfinished game and a banal children's title, something I can attest to as of the Playstation One generation. I knew of all the cheap titles released on the system (and filled the magazines eventually to their reviewers disgust) especially in the console's dying days before Playstation 2 effectively shoved it off its mortal coil finally, even played a few. Initially our commentator Paul is playing a cute armless mascot who has to acquire "pets", strange creatures littered around what is meant to be the only level that was fully developed. Unfinished games, or shelved ones, are a fascination for gamers too and the internet has allowed these works to be accessible for many. It is a dreamlike place we witness, a floating world of corridors with an emphasis on purplish pink. Some of the aspects come off as off-colour, like a ball pet who wins awards because she stays in a cage the longest, but the first episode is innocuous...

Well, that is until Paul follows a cheat that he was given a note on with the game, a button combination that opens up a new place underneath the level. Called the Newmaker Plain, it is vast and dark grassy environment with little there. This is where Petscop reveals itself to be a horror mystery that lasted until 2020. Full disclosure, this review will talk about everything explicitly about Petscop, but it is not a puzzle to solve, which might frustrate fans of ARGs (Alternative Reality Gaming), a concept that can link even back to the Blair Witch Project website that tied into the 1999 film, multimedia works particularly for YouTube where fan speculation and guessing mysteries exist. Petscop developed a cult, when the first four episodes were posted online, but it is also elusive in terms of what its themes are. We can confirm its creator as Tony Domenico, who had previous experience developing his own games before he came to this project.

Petscop for all purposes looks like a real Playstation One game. The initial set up is a bright if desolate world of a children's video game, of cute characters and pronounced colours, all with a birthday/party motif like a present on the opening screen or the trinkets that have to be collected being like novelties. Even when one finds a curious form of purgatory underneath, of an elusive windmill and a "tool" which can be asked questions to by a textbook, the mechanics of Petscop can be an actual game. The character moves and interacts with objects, the complexity found in the time delayed secrets or that the game itself for Paul hides secrets even in the secret option when a certain sound in the sound effects option is replaced continually. The only aspect which breaks potential credibility, as Petscop has an officially accepted fan version that can be played called Giftscop¹, is when a character named Marvin is introduced whom the player character can communicate to with Playstation controller buttons combinations. That is a bit ahead of us in terms of the plot, but as someone who once played his Playstation quite a bit, those controllers were never designed for anything barring a strange form of Morse code.

Petscop , in both its best aspect but also in a detail that may frustrate some viewers, also is not overtly scary. It has no jump scares, no explicit shock value, and neither does it became a conventional CreepyPasta (online fan spun urban legend) of a cursed video game that leads to death and game characters usually bleeding blood out of their eyes. (Sonic the Hedgehog is a great example of this, if you look up "Sonic CreepyPastas" online, where Sonic becomes the eye bleeding demon soul eater). What is eerie is how slow burn the web series was, especially now I and many do not have to wait to over three months for more videos if longer as the fan base did, with a tale never fully explained and drip feeding a full story eventually to its conclusion.

The one caveat which applies to the first ten episodes, before being stepped back from, was the overt references to a real life case about Candace Newmaker. Newmaker was tragically a young adopted girl whose adopted parents, rather than dealing with her disconnection to them through licensed therapists, went to an unlicensed one and killed her by accident during an attempted "rebirthing" ritual, a scenario which they effectively suffocated her to death under a pillow in a misbegotten and callous stunt which was documented as being cruel anyway. Any knowledge of this case, and now you know, could make Petscop  tasteless as it is initially set up with overt references to Newmaker, as the player character finds a place where (through a changing canvas and extremely long elevator rides) they can wander through rooms of adopted children. Creator Domenico has explicitly regretted using the real life references, apologetic to the point it is on the top of his Twitter account¹, and moving away from Episode 11 on with no references at all if possible. I do not condemn the project myself, especially with this creative decision having taken place and the creator himself finding a much more different direction for the better in his own work.

Rebirthing and child adoption is still the theme onwards as, to try to make sense of a fragment of this tale, it is a dark story of a man named Marvin. Possibly kidnapping his daughter because he felt she was the reincarnation of a childhood friend who vanished. This could all be a j'accuse, a mere attack, by another figure who is likely the creator as, whilst we do not see him, we read text written by him in the game. In the first half, most of the episodes are vague with the added context of Paul, a figure whose connection to the game becomes increasingly suspect as he is eventually perturbed by the content, as text bubbles are no longer cute but uncomfortable and the material gets considerably darker. It gets to the point, though a later episode does reveal the truth of what they are, there is even censorship of details too intimate for him which are obscured by black bars.

Adding to the nature of this, which is where viewer participation comes to play, is where the text accompanying these videos on YouTube suggest that others are involved releasing these videos whether Paul would want them to or not. This can be done in cinema, but online productions have run intentionally with this sense that even the medium itself you can watch videos through can be manipulated and offer much in what if even utterly vague as some of these accompanying messages were. An issue of how to preserve them in the future (alongside Petscop itself) is to be aware of, yet whilst YouTube exists these little touches are interesting, forcing you to read the author's text rather than ignore it for all the mystery it also evokes.

Of note as well is the fact Paul is not just playing this game, toying with the initial medium of the Let's Play where we will have a narrator most of the time talking. He is throughout talking to an unknown listener - Us or another person? - during the first ten episodes. Later he talks to someone we never hear, including referencing and questioning a fan theory he was kidnapped and pulled into a car. Halfway through he vanishes briefly, which lead to that fan theory, silence as we see the game continue on. One video, Episode 16, is literally a flashing message of the game having been left on, two minutes of this that asks that family and police to be called but the console to be left on.

Petscop escalates, and gets weirder and more compelling, when the "Demos" are introduced in Episode 11. "Demo" modes in old games, as I fondly remember, are that if you leave the game at the main menu untouched will go to footage of game play being shown. The demo scenes in Petscop change a considerable amount of the tone as the genre literally turns on its head, showing this had a first person mode and the ability to communicate to other figures with button mashing. As it transpires, when the secret menu is found, these demos are old games files and the puzzle grows in new options. If Petscop was a game, it would be such a fascinating one if you put the time in. Episode 11 also introduces the school which is symbolically of significance for the whole work, in first person with a glitch where it flickers and feels graphically erratic with collision detection issues to add to the ill omen of the environment.

This second half is liable to divide people. Those wanting more answers may be disappointed. Those who came to this, as I did, not expecting answers will be rewarded however in a different way; the plot outline I gave earlier barely covers what might or might not be involved, such as the extent the figure of Marvin who is introduced plays in the game's existence, or the theories that fans have suggested, but an emotional and symbolic conclusion is provided which succeeds. Suffice to say there is a lot to ask, and a question is left on the table as to what Tony Domenico's intention was with Petscop. Entirely subjective, it is however openly dealing with childhood trauma. It may have made a mistake in referencing the Candace Newmaker story, but what it does instead to compensate is very interesting. Structurally, a game about collecting pets turning into collecting three children over its course is a structure to which Petscop  with careful thought tackles neglect and mistreatment in dark stories of emotional bullying or kidnapping, which is very unconventional and could have easily become a crass and cheap shock work in another's hands.

Petscop never becomes crass or exaggerated, and it is poignant one of the biggest moments by the end is when passing a painting in the school (which the player is dragged to continually by an invisible force) you get a scene of the player and an unseen consoler play out, the later encouraging them to play a board game together (disturbingly called Gravediggers, like a morbid Battleship) whilst they ask the player ominous questions. There is no shock or twist, but the jarring change in tone and moment turns it into a huge moment for the production. The climax, which technically exists in two forms, was fulfilling for me too. In game, it involves a transformation machine and an actual use for all those trinkets collected, a sombre and matter of fact end which can be interpreted many ways, but clearly ends as it leads to a quiet stillness outside the school and returning back to the start screen, with the ability to play end credits in the options fully confirming this as the conclusion. The actual ending in 2020 was the video for the soundtrack, which was released to purchase. Mainly empty locations in Petscop, it however has an epilogue which suggests a potential happy conclusion or at least a new place, as family comes to be there for the armless figure in the centre. A cute little yellow blog who, in a running joke turned into a morbid detail, it cannot open doors due to the lack of hands, we follow this sprite during the entire production and it seems a sweet, strange ending that the last figure it meets does not come with a mystery but from a place of welcome arms.

Altogether, Petscop is an achievement. It is one I admire for its labour intensive creation and trying to a take a concept, a Let's Play, and turn it into something unique with a real dynamic weight. Coming to the web project, I did not consider this would take such a mature tone to very adult concepts, and the result is exceptional. It does evoke a concern, again, of how in say ten years a work like this is preserved if YouTube was ever turned off. Even in mere memory, it could easily happen that a work like this could be forgotten in the mass of content that is uploaded every day, but until that point right now this is just an innovative work a cineaste like me can admire as equally as regular cinema. Hence why it deserves to be covered like a film.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Disturbing/Eerie/Slow Burn/Unsettling

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

========

1) Giftscop did remove elements from the game, like searching the special options, probably due to practicality for those producing that version.

2) The exact twitter post, (which I will link to HERE), is thus:

"Regarding Newmaker references. Most of you know that this was intentional but I wanted to confirm it.

It was extremely stupid of me."

The Lighthouse (2019)

Director: Robert Eggers

Screenplay: Robert and Max Eggers

Cast: Robert Pattinson as Thomas Howard; Willem Dafoe as Thomas Wake; Valeriia Karaman as the Mermaid

If cinema was dead, how does The Lighthouse exist and do as well as it did? Robert Eggers, after the success of The Witch (2015), was in the position of many filmmakers where after success they can crash and burn with projects where the producers allow them carte blanche to make whatever they want. I love such projects, but they rarely success. This could've been such a case, managing to be a monochrome film shot on 35mm celluloid about Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson going insane in a 19th century lighthouse, even shot in a 1.19:1 aspect ratio. What we got instead was a highly admired film that even got a Best Cinematography nomination at the Academy Awards.

Well The Lighthouse exists and upfront I loved the perverse weird thing completely. Dafoe is an old lighthouse keeper, introducing himself with a fart and sounding like the Old Sea Captain parody from The Simpsons, whilst Robert Pattinson is a new employee on an island. The Lighthouse from here is surprisingly simple in what it's about, namely that it makes a damn good argument about the dangers of getting shitfaced on alcohol continually. I'd argue there are explicit supernatural aspects, as I'll get to the seagull, whilst there is also the subplot that Dafoe is obsessed with keeping Patterson out of the top of the lighthouse^*. Aside from this, this is a film about two men going insane. This is not helped by the fact the drinking water isn't great, being in the 19th century, and booze is found on the island with considerable ease.

Eggers' style here is distinct. Shot in black and white, to the point the cinematographer Jarin Blaschke was working with a camera lens as old as from 1912¹ and had to figure out how to adapt it to modern cameras, this film looks truly unique. Adding to this nature, unique in text, is that the screenplay by the Eggers brothers comes from them having done their research and pulling from history for aesthetic, to the point of the lighthouse having been built for the film. This is distinct too as, referencing the supernatural, they pulled from folklore. Shrouded on an island in the middle of the sea, the film runs with nautical aesthetic of the kind where it would make perfect sense for characters to suddenly quote Moby Dick era Herman Melville. This is apt since the script openly admits it took quotation from Melville and Sarah Orne Jewett.

You can practically taste in the air and dirt being blown everywhere, the alien grotesqueness of this world in its use of squid tendrils, crustaceans and other aquatic life on and under the sea. Erotically too as, whilst Patterson's character is also a man hiding a secret, the first moment he starts to crack is when he apparently finds a mermaid (Valeriia Karaman). Thanks to the screenwriters' research on shark vaginas, you get a film here like Peter Strickland's In Fabric (2018) which manages to get away with stuff in a fifteen rated film in the United Kingdom which is gleefully transgressive.

The little supernatural details do suggest a bit more is going on in the island. There is a one eyed seagull, (played by three in a dying breed of trained birds from Britain who, alongside their trainer, should've gotten a Best Supporting Acting Oscar nomination², a bird onscreen that is visibly antagonistic in their small role to Patterson in an unnaturally intelligent way. Dafoe wants him never to kill seagulls, as they are said to be the souls of the sailors who died at sea, which comes into play. The secret of what is in the top of the lighthouse is never ever seen by us; suffice to say that in how its shot, it cannot be something like a hallucination but nudges into cosmic horror, the area of H.P. Lovecraft or even a William Hope Hodgson in that there are things which are beyond the senses of human beings at the sea. There's even a religious strain as especially in one shot, a reference to Prometheus, the man who acquired fire for human kind of note due to how unfortunate his reward for that was from the ancient Greek gods.

Beyond this, the mood and style offers a dramatic weight for what is very clearly told in terms of story, especially as it swings upon the guilt that Patterson character is trying to suppress but failing to. Helping considerably is that the performances are excellent; Dafoe is a veteran who has always been reliable, whilst Robert Pattinson becoming as good as his senior. Patterson is in a fascinating position that, starting the 2010s in the last of the Twilight films where he really wasn't good, only to become a distinct and great actor, he is in the position of a figure like James Dean where his handsomeness has made him an idol but he himself wishes to become a great actor, which he has strived for and proven himself with. The script itself between him and Dafoe, a two actor film, helped considerably especially as The Lighthouse for all its darkness is rife in exceptional ye old English and is hilarious at times. The film is intentionally funny if you have an incredibly dark sense of humour; the longest monologue, performed by Dafoe that goes into godless intense vengefulness and even evokes the sea god Triton, is played for its over the top nature and language, and only happens because Patterson criticised Dafoe's cooking. Such brevity in the middle of what is a pretty dark film helps so much for it to grow.

Also worth noting is the use of the ratio, where a modern cinema would have to press the buttons to change the shape of the screen to show this film. It's smaller than even the Academy ratio of 1.375:1, one of the earliest in American cinema chosen to organise films to a specific one. It's a testament to how archaic this looks in that the last film I saw in the cinema with a similar square screen image before The Lighthouse was James Whale's The Old Dark House, a film from 1932 which was also a deeply strange and perversely humorous tale. Whilst it could be seen as distancing a viewer, this aspect ratio actually sucked me into this world, a rich one fully felt but the ratio perfect for three actors, a flock of seagulls and no one else onscreen at a single location. The incredible sense of craft on display for such weirdness is something to admire especially as it gets under the skin.

It's pointless to wax admirably about The Lighthouse beyond this, as the film is both a maximalist gem in terms of its craft but very simple to grasp and access, not needing to be scruntiased further. Eggers to his credit avoided both making an over ambitious bomb or trying to make a follow on from his first success, which can plague artists regardless of medium. The result's existence is miraculous and a much needed moment of positivity, showing that bold experimental filmmaking can exist outside the avant-garde. Usually it happens in genre cinema like this a lot, but this belongs to a fascinating series of films, whether each succeed or not, that have been lumped into "elevated horror". That name is problematic, coined by journalists who didn't want to admit praising a horror film, but the idea of horror cinema being a vessel for idiosyncratic oddness and artistic creativity has been with it since Georges Méliès' supernatural films³, making these leanings a rich vein in the genre which has thankfully returned and in the mainstream no less. That its lead to a cartload (boatload) of films over the end of the 2010s which are unpredictable and divisive, from Midsommar (2019) to even Darren Aronofsky's mother! (2017) no matter how I loathed it, is a good sign. And whilst horror cinema from around the world is eclectic, that this moment in the United States exists and makes a contrast to Blumhouse Productions, which disappoints me in every film I see squandering deep concepts for average productions, is only a good thing.

Abstract Spectrum: Absurd/Atmospheric/Bawdy/Grotesque/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

=============

1) HERE

2) HERE

3) As of 2020, Eggers has been tagged to a reinterpretation of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), which considering the film has been remade by Werner Herzog means there's no sense of hesitation to this idea, as it the promise that Eggers will likely be researching real vampire lore for his work if it ever was produced and made.

* [MAJOR SPOILER WARNING] Looking into the light up there was probably the worst thing Patterson could do, certainly evoking a Lovecraftian monstrosity especially when you end up seagull food. It does evoke, alongside an explicit depiction of Dafoe (naked) with lights coming out of his eyes, some real supernatural aspects. The contrast with all the stuff likely conjured to Patterson's character as his sanity goes for a walk is well balanced, allowing both sides to exist without a cheap compromise to either taking place [MAJOR SPOILERS END].

Serial Experiments Lain (1998)

From http://st.cdjapan.co.jp/pictures/l/03/
19/GNXA-1159.jpg?v=2

Director: Ryutaro Nakamura

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka

(Voice) Cast: Ayako Kawasumi as Mika Iwakura; Rei Igarashi as Miho Iwakura; Ryunosuke Ohbayashi as Yasuo Iwakura; Yoko Asada as Alice Mizuki

A 1000 Anime Crossover

This is from my other blog 1000 Anime, the same review but with additional material added to the end. As not all my reviews for that blog, covering anime, would be appropriate for this blog's subject, follow the link to the original review HERE and take a gander at the various other reviews you have been missing out on from there.

When Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) became a massive cultural supernova, including its 1997 theatrical alternative ending End of Evangelion, there were many attempts to ride its coat tails in terms of more adult anime. There were many attempts at an "Evangelion Killer", mecha shows which tried to follow varying from highly regarded work like RahXephon (2002) to failures like Brain Powrd (1998). The other aspect about Evangelion is that it almost became a giant flag held aloft for more unconventional and experimental anime television series to appear even if it never had any direct influence. Certainly though, between the controversies surrounding some of Evangelion's content and that, in the last half, Hideaki Anno's known personal and mental health issues were literally leading to episodes using line drawings, the fact Envangelion actually succeeded rather than crashed and burned would've allowed braver work to appear more easily if other production companies wondered if there was now a market to start creating them. Certainly experimental OVAs and theatrical films existed, but in terms of television series before Evangelion? A question to consider, mainly due to the difficult in watching every show that came before and after Evangelion to plot out a history, especially as under its shadow into the modern day, there's been many odd and bold creative works in existence even in micro-series comedies that have appeared. One of the earliest to appear immediately after Evangelion, which can be confirmed, was the cerebral sci-fi series Serial Experiments Lain, which still has a warm reputation in the West to this day.

Lain's story is incredibly relevant in the 2010s, amazingly prescient on issues we are coming to terms with about the internet and the potential existential and sociological problems with it, all in mind that whilst the internet is briefly references, this exists in a world where it's been replaced with the Navi instead of computers and its own form of the internet called the "Wired". Thankfully, this means, regardless of visual details, there's no concern of this having dated anyway since the technology already looked alien to any world and the ideas are of greater concern. It helps, from this, the series never tried to create an accurate vision of the future, instead looking at the fears and concerns of this machinery even in terms of spirituality as we follow the titular Lain, a teenage girl stuck in perpetual childishness at first and utterly computer illiterate until she and the girls in her class start getting texts from a classmate who had commit suicide previously. As she becomes obsessed with the Wired, head screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka nosedives as she does into a world of philosophy, a potential God on the Wired communicating to her, and some sobering and accurate predictions on concerns we are getting to twenty plus years later from Serial Experiments Lain.

Identity theft and the obscurity the web allows? Lain finds there's an alternative version of herself online who is much bolder and even evil. Data security and personal information being compromised? Said version of Lain leads to Lain herself being accused as a peeping tom at school. Secret online groups and computer hacking? The Knights of Eastern Calculus, eerily similar to the semi-fictional organisation of expert Lisp and Scheme hackers called the Knights of the Lambda Calculus, a hacking group who will even lead people to being harmed or maimed by attacking any technology, such as traffic light systems to blurring a children's tag game with a shooter, who want to break the barrier between the "Real" World and the digital one. Existentialism and post-humanism? The idea some individuals want to evolve human beings to leave their bodies and becoming permanent consciousnesses online. Hell, throw in conspiracy theories in general too, though the only weird detail, which is weird and the only one which dates the series to back when the nineties run of The X-Files was, is where the hell the cameo by a literal green alien came from in Konaka's mind.

Lain as a series does eventually become esoteric; at first, it skims the waters of horror so much it feels like it's going to become a permanent resident, with literal phantoms haunting Lain even in the day and the telephone lines bleeding. It also emphasises how good the show was aesthetically. Now, probably the biggest surprise for me returning was that, having always been available on DVD through MVM, the original version was incredibly muddy in hindsight to the point it added to the mood, leaving the experience of seeing this thirteen episode series again on a recent restoration looking like a brand new work. Its emphasised how even on a television budget the production took its potential restrictions as an advantage, boldness in its natural look contrasting heightened colour and lighting choices. Of note too, more pertinent now in comparison to each other, the character designer is Yoshitoshi ABe, creator of the original dōjinshi of Haibane Renmei, adapted into a 2002 anime which also feels like it's in the shadow of Evangelion in terms of very creative and utterly unique animated television, a very unconventional afterlife parable with the same muted style and slow burn pace Serial Experiments Lain has¹.

Again, as I've rightly remembered for years, the first few episodes feel like sci-fi horror, the images of humming electrical wires and the sense of desolate streets even in ordinary busy Japanese streets evoking what Kiyoshi Kurosawa would later go with for Pulse (2001). Contrast this with the night time scenes, with heavy neon green lighting, or the increasing influence of the computer technology through the plot, even turning into an almost bio-mechanical entity in Lain's bedroom, the floor wet in coolant, covering the entire room where once she still had plush toys everywhere. The world of the Wired is just as distinct and strange, metaphor and symbolically doing its best to perfectly imaging  an internet chatroom by representing gossiping avatars by being merely lips or eyes, or how in fear of others taking her identity, the same figures have mannequin heads of Lain on their shoulders in a darkened room in cyberspace. In knowledge that in this world, Lain herself practically enters the Wired beyond symbolic meaning, these literal visitations around unique environments are as much there to get to Chiaki J. Konaka's obsession with constantly breaking reality into pieces in most of what he writes, he both notorious and distinct in how the literal and the metaphorical are deliberately blurred in his work even for live action films like Evil Dead Trap 2 (1991); even for a children's show like Princess Tutu (2002) about ballet and fairy tales, when it gets to an inter-dimensional clockwork world where the "author" of the show exists, you can tell which episode Konaka was writing among other script writers when it's the one with the most meta and unconventional philosophy even if the target demographic was kids first. 

From https://www.otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/
uploads/2018/09/lain06.jpg

Sound is also of importance, and not just for the inspired choice of a song by a British band on the opening credits, Bôa given a lasting cult reputation just from anime fans who had their song ] become an earworm, but on the emphasis too on sound design that crawls under the skin. It's completely comparable to Boogiepop Phantom (2000), another highly experimental show fromn this era, between them offering nuisance noise and electronic effects.

[Major Spoiler Warning]

As mentioned, this series is from Konaka, an incredibly divisive screenwriter who leads Lain to becoming difficult at points, early into the series shattering reality when even a giant deity like Lain, to her own surprise, appears up in the clouds for children to stare up to. Later episodes get into even arguments about the existence of God, an entire episode on intermingling real history of the internet and the likes of Project Xanadu with UFO conspiracy and the introduction of "Deus", a figure (Eiri) formerly human who has become a self proclaimed God of the Wired, and one episode (Infornography) whose first half if a compilation of images from previous episodes, all to represent Lain downloading an entire Navi system into her own brain, matched by a guitar riff you could grow a mullet from. Probably the biggest factor, though, which might divide viewers, is when Lain is shown not to merely by an ordinary character, who is brought into these strange events, but is part of a character arch of a unique one-off figure rediscovering her own abilities, a being (possibly through an ESP experiment talked of halfway through) capable of going beyond the Wired to actual God-like abilities. This is controversial as a plot point as, as shown in the worst examples of modern franchise blockbusters in fact, it does limit the connectability of the story from the viewer. I feel however that, especially as the first few episodes feel random, the narrowing of the narrative not only helps the show and but, as it focuses on specific characters, the real virtue of the characterisation appears.

[Spoilers End]

Another thing I forgot, for all its esoteric and eerie shenanigans, was how emotional the show eventually is. Here I admit, for its entire cool atmosphere, and general sense of complete strangeness, actually the real virtue turns out to be the bitter-sweet tale of Lain trying to find happiness. Only close to Alice Mizuki, a school friend, her isolation in the world and how attempt to grow on the Wired (literally) is fraught with further isolation, here a tale which does anchor the entire series with a greater meaning. All the philosophy is weighted ultimately by how as much it connects to her too, evoked when rather than the usual opening before the credits (a male voice over text) she opens the final episode talking directly to us about whether she actually exists or not. All the eccentricities are softened by how utterly emotional the show finally is within the final scenes.

This means Serial Experiments Lain earns its pretensions. Chiaki J. Konaka is notorious for his clear hatred for conventional linear storytelling, but there is so much about the dangers of the physical world against the digital one which have become ever more salient. It also makes sure the characters are of interest around Lain too. Her family, very disconnected, are so for a reason and builds itself to one single scene of emotional resonance; even two men in black, with cybernetic eyeglasses which stalk outside her house, get personalities and enough humanity to why they are there that their fate as everything turns pear shape is significant. That's ultimately, upon returning to this show, why I still love Serial Experiments Lain.

I once, on the first viewing, dismissed it with the same misguidedness I dismissed Boogiepop Phantom, another of these bold and innovative works from under the shadow of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Second time, many years later, it was the surreal and unconventional tone, on the borderline to horror and sci-fi, completely introspective and psychological, which won out. Now, this is in mind still but the drama is all what's left at the end and actually touching in the end. Certainly for me, when you start most series, you should hope for a progression where the final episode is that you'd never expect it to end as from just the first episode, said progression felt throughout natural or at least an escalation in drama, emotional and/or spectracle. Certainly, with Lain this is as good as you could get with this natural progression.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Avant-Garde/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

From https://archive-media-1.nyafuu.org/bant/image/
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1) It would be an utter disservice not to mention producer Yasuyuki Ueda, who helped put together this show knowing the risk. He produced Lain, Haibane Renmei (working with Yoshitoshi ABe a lot), and a lot of work between the experimental to more adult, from Texhnolyze (2003) to Hellsing Ultimate (2006), that have been pretty well regarded and even successful.