It neither musters the campy horror of Ju-on nor follows through on its art-house potential.
Marebito (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:12
Rotten:17
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: The scares are lacking in this J-horror flick, and the plot soon turns half-baked.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for strong bloody violence and some nudity
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:Dec 9, 2005 Limited
Synopsis: Japanese director Takashi Shimizu (JU-ON) presents another slice of atmospheric J-horror with his gory frightfest MAREBITO. In an inspired bit of casting, real-life director Shinya Tsukamoto... Japanese director Takashi Shimizu (JU-ON) presents another slice of atmospheric J-horror with his gory frightfest MAREBITO. In an inspired bit of casting, real-life director Shinya Tsukamoto (TETSUO: THE IRON MAN) stars as Masuoka, a filmmaker obsessed with capturing the essence of fear via his ever-present digital-video camera. When Masuoka accidentally films a grisly suicide in the Tokyo subway, he begins to explore the system's subterranean depths and finds a ghostly pale, mute girl (Tomomi Miyashita) chained naked to a rock. Bringing her back to his apartment, Masuoka soon learns that his new companion drinks only blood, which he compliantly feeds her--in increasingly disturbing ways. Shot on a tight schedule over an eight-day break between JU-ON and its American remake, THE GRUDGE, MAREBITO makes effective use of its claustrophobic, underworld locales and grainy, hand-held cinematography for a ghoulishly queasy and self-reflexive treatise on the nexus between art and reality, and media and violence. [More]
Starring: Shinya Tsukamoto, Tomomi Miyashita
Starring: Shinya Tsukamoto, Tomomi Miyashita
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Screenwriter: Chiaki Konaka
Studio: Tartan Films
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Reviews for Marebito
It is far from a completely successful experiment, but it does create something with a unique enough identity to be worth exploring.
It drops names such as Madame Blavatsky for gravitas, but has as little to do with theosophy as a Westerner has to do with chopsticks.
Any profound statement that Shimizu is making gets lost in translation, if it was ever there in the first place.
The gloppy sound effects are so over-the-top, they invite laughter, and the bloodsucking scenes are allowed to become absurdly repetitious.
It's not really scary, but it reaches a level of insanity so unhinged and dispassionately wretched that it defies description.
Shimizu has done what compatriots such as Hideo Nakata have not yet managed to do: make a contemporary Japanese horror movie that has some new ideas in it.
Shimizu doesn't quite achieve the ostensible goal of Marebito's verite style and purposefully low-tech execution: to pervert our sense of what is real.
Marebito is a disturbing supernatural drama that leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
By the end, the story's ambiguities begin to cancel each other out, leaving us with no good readings rather than a multitude of valid ones.
Marebito is no conventional vampire movie but a speculation into the notion that ancient people could sense alien beings in their midst.
Shot on digital video as murky as Masuoka's imagination, its creeping sense of dank dread is as slow to build as it is hard to shake.
The look of the film, and the gore, meld into the real and unreal of this hero's journey. But the journey is muddled, and at times unintentionally funny.
And if the trip doesn't have the clear-cut directions of a Hollywood film, it has all the ideas -- and cold, unsettling flights of fantasy -- of a nightmare, where faceless people look and look and look, but never see.
For Japanese horror aficionados only, and even they are likely to be underwhelmed by this stew of half-baked ideas and creepy sensations.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 36% 36% | G.I. Joe: The Rise of … |
| 52% 52% | The Taking of Pelham 1… |
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| 19% 19% | Transformers: Revenge … |
| 55% 55% | Orphan |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 88% 88% | Ballast |
| 66% 66% | The Merry Gentleman |
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