House 2010 Horror Movie Review

Every once in a while you read about a film that it’s indescribable and like nothing you’ve ever seen before.  Usually that’s hyperbole; it’s just a bit offbeat.  Not in this case.  House (made in 1977) is like no other film I’d ever seen before, and I loved every minute.  The closest in vibe to this film that I’ve seen is Funky Forest: The First Contact - but that one’s all over the place, and lacks the continuity of a single strange story like House.  It’s surreal horror, a hallucinatory and often hilarious supernatural thriller about Japanese schoolgirls who spend their school vacation visiting the aging aunt of their classmate. 


Gorgeous, as she’s known, is irate that her father has decided to remarry, and so she invites her friends to stay in the aging and empty country house of her aunt rather than go with her father and his fiancee on vacation.  We are introduced to each of her friends, all of whom have nicknames that describe their temperament and character: there is the beautiful Gorgeous, there’s the apparently dreamy and gullible Fantasy, the brainy Professor, the always hungry Mac, the musical Melody, and so on.  Along the way, on a magical train ride in which the animated fantasy background that shines through the windows of the train seems to resemble a film strip, she tells them how her aunt had once loved a man who promised to come for her after the war, but never returned.  When they arrive, their aunt seems a bit too eager to see them, and odd remarks lead to inexplicable occurrences, and pretty soon it’s over-the-top scary silly supernatural surreal mayhem.  The director seems to delight in retro-styled effects and sight gags, using stop motion and green screen to create a fantastic realm of visual jokes and horror.  Combining live action and animation, the film transcends kitch and schlockiness into a realm of cinematic magic, that draws upon Japanese magical traditions of Yokai and witches and vengeful ghosts, but also evokes the era in which it was made, and appears to be making fun of a certain kind of depiction of youth in cinema.  Fun stuff, and exciting to see that Criterion is releasing it (not surprising given that Janus films supervised the recent critically acclaimed theatrical rerelease). 


Here’s what to expect on the 1-disc Criterion set:

-a new, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)

-a video piece featuring interviews with director Nobuhiko Obayashi, story scenarist and daughter of the director Chigumi Obayashi, and screenwriter Chiho Katsura

-Emotion, a 1966 experimental film by Obayashi

-a new video appreciation by director Ti West (House of the Devil)

-the theatrical trailer

-new and improved English subtitle translation

-and an essay by film critic Chuck Stephens