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KAKASHI
7/10
Scarecrow
: Japan 2001 : Norio
Tsuruta : 86 mins
We
are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
T S Eliot, The Hollow Men
Baffled
by the sudden disappearance of her brother, twentysomething Kaoru (Maho
Nonami) follows a trail of clues to Kozuata-Mura, an isolated village
in rural Japan. There she finds the locals defensive and uncommunicative
as they prepare for their annual festival of Kakashi – scarecrows invested
with the spirits of the dead…
Based
on a graphic novel by Junji Ito, Kakashi is, most strikingly, a
patchwork of references to previous horror movies. Fans of the genre will
identify specific incidents that quote from (or, perhaps, unintentionally
recall) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 version), The Shining,
The Fog, In The Mouth of Madness and Stephen King adaptations
The Dead Zone and Pet Sematary, while the wider structure
of Osamu Murakami’s script nods to Children of the Corn (also from
King), and a pair of thematic cousins from an earlier era of more genteel,
British scare-fests: Horror Hotel (1963) and, most strongly, The
Wicker Man (1973).
Writing
about that film in Cult Movies 2, Danny Peary traces its debt to
the seminal 1960s TV show The Avengers, and Kakashi feels,
if anything, even closer in atmosphere to The Avengers than The
Wicker Man ever managed. Kozuata-Mura is a creepily underpopulated
village, and the few countryfolk we see mainly go about their business
in ominous silence. The noisiest inhabitant is a sinister policeman who
turns out not to be not quite human – as we find out when his arm wrenched
from its socket in a moment that seems a clear nod to 1939’s Son of
Frankenstein.
‘Seems’
is the word, however - it’s probably a mistake to infer too many ‘western’
influences behind what’s clearly a very Japanese type of horror, part
of the tidal wave of genre movies that followed in the wake of the blockbuster
Ring
cycle. Director Nuruta was responsible for that movie’s first sequel,
and Kakashi follows the same basic dynamic as Ring itself,
with a nervy young woman leaving the safety of the city behind to uncover
ancient horrors in the distant, more atavistic atmosphere of the deceptively
idyllic back-of-beyond.
The
exact what and why of the horror is left somewhat fuzzy, but Nuruta’s
precise handling of tone means that this (like the flatness of the general
look – perhaps another Wicker Man nod?) isn’t too much of a problem
– he keeps his nerve, never once giving way to camp or irony, holding
firm to a persuasively straight mood of encroaching morbidity.
“Is
this a dream, or a fantasy?” is a line repeated no less than six times,
and it’s clear that Kakashi is on one level a series of interlocking
anxiety dreams, the various subplots dramatising the most primal fears
(death, abandonment, incest) of family members about their loved ones,
not to mention the mutual suspicions between city dwellers and their rural
cousins. But this is a chiller with a refreshingly low emotional temperature,
judicious in its deployment of shocks and relying much more on spooky
silences, pauses, and things not happening. The Kakashi’s faces
are as blank as the cinema screen itself, eager to receive the projected
outlines of our deepest fears.
10th
June 2002
(seen 13th April, Melkweg,
Amsterdam : 18th
Fantastic Film Festival)
by Neil
Young
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