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A
LIVING HELL
6/10
Iki-jigoku
: Japan 2000 : Fujii Shugo : 114 mins
ONE-LINE
REVIEW: Enjoyably demented psychological-horror-farce defies – for a while
- the limitations of an obviously shoestring budget.
For
an hour or so, A Living Hell is a remarkable piece of work, as
28-year-old writer-director-editor-performer Shugoo sustains a jagged,
hysterical mood that traces the lethal razor edge between terror and humour.
The basic situation is straight from those sweat-and-blood-soaked bad
dreams where we’re attacked in our homes by vicious, unstoppable, inescapable
foes. This is the fate that befalls Yasuto (Hirohito Honda), a surly twentysomething
confined to a wheelchair (by “anxiety”!) and thus largely trapped in the
nondescript suburban house he shares with his inattentive family. It isn’t
a large dwelling, and feels even more cramped than usual when a pair of
distant relatives suddenly move in: elderly crone Chiyo (Shiraisihi Yoshiko?)
and her apparently autistic, mute daughter Yuki (Rumi). Yasuto’s instinctive
dislike of the new arrivals is soon justified, the pair wasting no time
in subjecting the lad to an apparently motiveless campaign of mental and
physical abuse that rapidly slides into torture…
A
Living Hell is anything but a slick production, often sporting a notably
cheap look and a scattershot application of ‘shock’ music effects. Shugo
has more than enough imagination and talent to transcend an obviously
limited budget, however, and the small number of locations and actors
actually ends up working to the film’s advantage. We feel the relentlessly
oppressive claustrophobia of Yasuto’s house, and get to know its various
faceless rooms at least as well as our own. The film’s horrors are explicitly
domestic – the psychotic pair make sinister use of many everyday,
household implements – giving its excesses a surreal edge while simultaneously
allowing Shugo to make a few sly points about current Japanese society
in general, and the problems of extended-family living in particular.
But
although the film’s wild, dementedly original energy is undeniably impressive
– both Takashi Miike
and John Waters would surely approve – once it starts to flag, Shugo rapidly
loses control of his material. The final half-hour features a series of
increasingly desperate twists, and one interminable, almost unwatchable
scene in which the performers take turns gurning and hollering into a
static camera that represents the immobile Yasuto’s fixed perspective.
Even worse, Shugo tacks on something approaching a ‘rational’ subplot
- in which a journalist tracks down the truth behind the main protagonists
- that feels like an arbitrary attempt to pad the material out to feature
length with pseudo-scientific ‘explanations’. But the strong suit of A
Living Hell lies precisely in its early stretches’ absurd irrationality.
It seems that the best nightmares, like the best jokes, should never be
exposed to too much analysis.
1st
July 2002
(seen 14th April, Melkweg,
Amsterdam : 18th
Fantastic Film Festival)
by Neil
Young
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