Under the Silver Lake plot analysis

The key to understanding Under the Silver Lake (2018, David Robert Mitchell) is to approach it for what it is a guy in LA susceptible to the influence of pop culture to the point it has oversaturated his entire existence desperate to find hidden meanings covering up vast far reaching conspiracies through secret codes turns out to be right the whole time. Everything that happens to SAM is real. Save for two separate dream sequences. The film operates according to the logic that what if someone was losing their mind drowning in delusions of conspiracy theories but turns out they were all true? That’s the fun. David Robert Mitchell gets cinema. He’s made a movie where as a work of fiction a movie is capable of allowing for the possibility to give us an experience where conspiracy theories pay off. It makes the impossible possible. Unlike irl. 

     Yet Under the Silver Lake also serves a dual purpose in that it baits would be conspiracy theorist types with a bunch of red herrings and other circumstantial evidence tantalizing them to make their own interpretations that are groundless completely far-fetched and have no bearing on the narrative itself. Like Sam’s a murderer. No. Like Sam’s a schizophrenic. No. And that’s also what makes it so fun too. This self-reflexive aspect is so pronounced that even those of us who know everything that happens to Sam is real and not to infer anything the film doesn’t give us still can’t help but enjoy all of its mischievous deliberately misleading plot points.

Beware of the Dog Killer Sam isn’t the dog killer. But the film certainly has enough in it for some to draw this wholly circumstantial interpretation. 1. Because the first shot of the film has Beware of the Dog Killer vandalism on the window of the coffee shop this is an instance where it leads to Sam’s perspective being affected by society. A collective anxiety rubbing off on him. When he finds the Beware of the Dog Killer zine in the bookstore this displays a self-reflexive narrative within a self-reflexive narrative.

 
The Barking When Sam follows the girl played by Zosia Mamet into the restroom and afterwards lying on the floor that group of young women bark at him this really happens. It’s another misdirect this time leading viewers to speculate Sam hating women = Sam hating dogs = Sam killing women = Sam killing dogs. No. How do I know? Because in both of Sam’s dreams the figures in the dream bark and the sounds are of dogs barking. The girls in the restroom barking are the sounds of their own human voices.
 
His Smell Sam got sprayed by a skunk so he smells. Another plaything for those prone to speculation without the film offering any supporting evidence that would prove otherwise. At the outdoor night screening one of the Shooting Star girls even says it smells like skunk when Sam nears them.
 
The Can of Red Spray Paint In Sam’s room there’s a can of red spray paint. Easter egg red herring. Sam did not tag Beware of the Dog Killer on the street.
 
Disappearance of Sarah In bed when SARAH tells Sam the bracelet was from an old boyfriend then out in the courtyard the way she stares fixated up at the fireworks makes me think she didn’t know until that point that Jefferson Sevence was going through with his ascension protocols and selected her as one of his brides. Yes the fireworks did contain a secret message for Sarah and possibly the other two brides.
 
The Homeless King The guide played by David Yow is real. For those successful in decoding the secret messages hidden for the power elites he is here to open the doors. Why does he ask Sam Do you know what your biggest mistake was? And pull out the dog treats? This is one of the exceptionally ambiguous moments in the film. I stand by my conviction Sam’s telling the truth. And the Homeless King is confronting him about not being able to move on from his ex be stuck in the past pining for a sentimental comfort that is long gone unattainable because Homeless King is a sage.
 
The Songwriter Real. Three slash dangerous. Remember it’s only a movie. So fun. Sam’s a murderer though. Your culture is the shell of other men’s ambitions.
 
The Owl’s Kiss Real. Kills the zine author because he exposed her secrets. Powerful enough to cover it up fake it as a suicide. Tries to kill Sam but he defends himself and for the moment scares her off? Maybe. Or to risk a bit of hypocrisy going against my own key without evidence my intuition leans more toward Owl’s Kiss broke in to steal Sam’s Vanna White research from his dresser.
 
13 When the three girls in the convertible stop and the scoreboard lights up 7 5 1 we know this = 13. They go to a Jesus and the Brides of Dracula show that night. At that show cookies are passed out with 76 we know = 13. The cookies are an invite to one of the members of the group’ solo performance. 13 is just a gimmick promo for the band. But the deeper hidden message is 13 = one guy three wives = billionaire bunker directions backmasked on the seven inch. 

 
The Ending A message for us plainly out in the open is when Sam talks to Sarah in the bunker she says There’s no getting out now so I may as well make the most of it then there’s a cutaway to the Hollywood sign. An uplifting note to end on. Billboard putting up new ad covering his ex is Sam is ready for next chapter in life. When Sam goes over to Topless Bird Woman’s flat it’s him dodging his eviction making the least possible effort to do so. When he stands on the balcony and looks into his place his euphoria is fulfillment contentment seeing the keep quiet diamonds validates that he has attained insight into the explanation to the mystery his quest led him on. And he’s now part of a select few who will ever know. And it’s settled. And he’ll never tell anyone.
 
Beating Up Children Keying a cock onto the bonnet of one’s auto could be infuriating. In this film having everything to do with symbols and unknown forces I think Sam by sheer luck chance catching the culprits in the act is too cathartic karmic comeuppance to pass up.
 
Unsupportive Friends and Acquaintances Sam’s buddy played by Topher Grace doesn’t really care about what’s most important to Sam. When Sam talks about missing Sarah Bar Buddy changes subject to Dog Killer. Insert of Sam anxiously twisting cocktail napkin shows he can’t stop thinking about what happened to Sarah. Later Bar Buddy talks down all Sam’s paranoia. 

     When Balloon Girl tells Sam It’s silly wasting your energy on something that doesn’t matter Brimful of Asha by Cornershop is an easter egg not for Sam but for us suggesting through its lyrics that there’s hope optimism on a forty-five foreshadows the seven inch Sam just obtained that will contain a secret message and lead him onwards to the path to his ultimate quest. And we see it payoff unlike say Sam’s Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde poster in his living room hinting at an alter-ego yet we never see any occurrences that could indicate support such a theory.

 
Under the Silver Lake is Alice in Wonderland for Millennials where following the Volkswagen white Rabbit leads to as the author of the zine tells Sam where the Answers remain hidden under the Silver Lake. My only lingering curiosity troubling me is what was up with the pack of Fruit Stripe in Sarah’s shoe box? Just kidding. I’m not gonna take the bait. I have all I came for. And it’s a hell of a fun movie to rewatch.
     I don’t think Sam is a horrible person. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me? I love laugh so hard every time he beats those little kids’ asses. I don’t read any deeper meaning beyond what I’ve just covered either. I kinda don’t think this movie is okay with whatever you want to think it means. I think it’s only designed to be enjoyed on its surface level while simultaneously showing a hero who’s delusional looking too hard seeing things that aren’t there and rewarding him while also hoping we get the difference and understand not do attempt to be like him in real life.

Synecdoche, New York plot analysis

We can extract its meaning from its title in Synecdoche, New York (2008, Charlie Kaufman) the film stands in for the play stands in for Caden stands in for Adele Hazel Olive Ellen et al.

 

There’s a moment CADEN COTTARD dictates to his assistant the play should all take place in the course of a single day. This is the key to understanding the narrative. At the very end of the movie when Caden is Ellen walking and a note he receives from Ellen as Caden is Now you are here it’s 7:43 Now you are here it’s 7:44 Now you are. Gone.
     And as Caden sits on that bench talking to the actress playing Ellen’s mother he looks over and sees a spray paint tagged brick wall of a clock with its hands reading 7:45. The very first scene in Synecdoche, New York is an alarm clock at 7:44 AM that goes off at 7:45 AM. Near the end when Ellen auditions for the role of Caden she says Caden Cottard is a man already dead. He lives in a half world between stasis and anti-stasis. And time is concentrated. Chronology confused. 
     The entire film is the play itself. And a pretty damn funny one at that. Full of Kaufman wordplay existential dexterity. Like when the psychiatrist played by Hope Davis probes Is that why you killed yourself? Then corrects herself foreshadows SAMMY as Caden committing suicide by jumping off that roof. And Caden emphatically repeating I didn’t jump! Between stasis and anti-stasis. Everyone is everyone. Every day is every day.
     Other evidence that supports emphasizes it’s all a play is the way Sammy turns away from our angle to jump on the other side of the building we don’t see. So the film can conveniently cut to the aftermath. And the way in which at the funeral of Caden’s mother his dad is there and he mutters that his father shouldn’t be there because he’s already dead similarly reflects this as well. 
     

Eternal Sunshine plot analysis

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry) is an excruciatingly painful confrontational indictment against our weakness and inability to move on from the past without succumbing to the desperate need against our better judgement to reclaim the sentimental mild painkiller of a problem relationship that’s over with someone unattainable. Remember how happy we were together = If I could only get her back I’d be happy again = And everything would be better. No. It’s so dangerous because for romantics in our mind our memories of emotions and fantasies about reoccurring connection is as potent powerful as the real thing.

 

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the first thing helpful to understand is the reason why its nonlinear narrative is arranged the way it is. Howard from Lacuna erases Joel’s memories starting with the most recent. So if we reverse their chronology what we get based on the color of CLEMENTINE’S hair is.
 
1. Green When JOEL and Clementine meet it’s at a party Joel’s fighting couple friends Rob and Carrie invite him to. At Montauk. On the beach Clem is wearing an orange hoodie and her hair is dyed green. Later that night she B&Es into a large beach house and once inside Joel mutters about his reluctance to be there and Clem disdainfully tells him So go. Humiliated he does.
 
2. Red Joel goes back to Clementine seeking her out at the Barnes and Noble where she works. Clem has dyed red hair. Filling in some blanks it could be Joel and Clementine experience their honeymoon phase during this time. Bliss. Their happiest. Their first time going to the frozen Lake Charles. And though not placed here chronologically and shown in its entirety it seems they go back to what they refer to as Our House on Montauk on a freezing day and run along the shoreline in the snow.
 
3. Orange Honeymoon’s over phase. Clem dyes her hair orange. At Kang’s Chinese restaurant having dinner Joel realizes he’s bored with Clementine. They argue. One day at the flea market Clem says she wants a baby. They fight some more over that. One night Clem goes out alone has some drinks wrecks Joel’s car doorscraped fire hydrant. They fight some more. Joel berates Clem assuming she fucked someone because that’s how she gets people to like her.
 
4. Blue Clem has gone to Lacuna to have Joel erased. Rob and Carrie reveal the truth to Joel well Rob does. Joel cries in car and throws tape out window. Joel erases Clementine. The next day he wakes up and ditches work to go to Montauk. He meets Clementine on the train. They go back to her place. The next night they go to the frozen Charles. The following morning they realize they’ve met before. And erased each other. Decide to get back together.
 
The fun part is the first time you see Eternal Sunshine you think when they meet on the train they’re meeting for the first time. And at the end you think it’s romantic that despite their flaws they accept each other because relationships take work and no one’s perfect. No.
     After the opening sequence when Joel is in his car crying we’re already in his mind and this is the first memory to be erased. Notice how when he has that interaction with his neighbor played by Thomas Jay Ryan there’s already a dot on Joel’s temple. The messy confusing aspect of us seeing Joel in his own memories is due to the conflict that is Joel’s jealousy Patrick is stealing his identity to hook up with Clementine.
     The midpoint of the narrative is Joel wanting to call off the procedure. Iconic line reading by Carrey. Can you hear me I wanna call it off? So because the time Joel spent with Clementine when she had dyed red hair was when they were happiest Joel chooses in his imagination dyed red hair Clem to spirit away reconcile and make a pact to outwit the procedure with.
     But the thing is this isn’t Clementine remember. Dyed red hair Clem is Joel’s idealized fantasy of her. Not real. The only Clementine we could ever consider real in the film is blue dyed hair Clem. At the end when dyed green hair Clementine tells Joel to meet her in Montauk that’s Joel telling himself to. Then how does Clementine know to meet him there?
 
There’s a scene towards the end while Joel and Clem are in his mind on the run from the erasure when they wake up in bed on the snowy Montauk and Clem gleefully says Look where we are but then Joel says Clem this isn’t good. Something ominous about the way he says that line. Because Joel knows that Mierzwiak is definitely going to look for them there. Why?
     Because it’s their happiest purest memory together? So why is Joel troubled? Obvious reason is because it’s surely going to be erased. But the fear in his reaction reveals a dual purpose. It’s because this regressive distant impossible to return to state of jubilation is precisely what deceptively leads Joel and Clem to wrongly foolishly vulnerably pathetically think they can repair their future. 
     That’s why the last scene of the couple running together on the snowy shoreline is jump cut repeated several times. And the sad heartbreakingly aching song plays again the one during the opening credits that Joel was in tears over when the film begins. This is a horror ending. Tragedy impact. They're like addicts. This toxic relationship is destroying them. Yet they will still go back to chase that elusive remote far-gone brief moment when they were in love along with the feelings it brought them over and over again for years to come. And it always ends the same. Impossibly.

Honey badgers

Sum it up I’d say the lasting impact of Kiyoshi Kurosawa films are the ones that delve into evil.

 

My latest take on Cloud (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is that it’s a nasty mean cinematic evil that hacks into your morality and corrupts you. Before you even realize it’s too late.
     It starts off this cool serene even calming slice of life everyman tale about an online reseller. I actually love this. Making the mundane compelling dynamic for me is the highest echelons of cinematic alchemy. Think neorealism. Dude everything about this world I know nothing about in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s hands becomes mesmerizing.
     YOSHII back at his flat with the three point lighting setup white background dslr shooting the item for his online product listing somehow engulfs me in genuine curiosity interest. Magic. His hovering over that videogame like a honey badger. When his bitch gets home she is of secondary importance. I know I shouldn’t say bitch but if you’ve seen this you know the character AKIKO is a diabolical treacherous ho I’m sorry. Anyways when Yoshii’s finger hovers over that mouse is the most suspenseful moment in the film for me maybe more than anything else I’ve seen in a while. 
 
Then this capitalist horror turns into an action movie. Bait and switch as audience punishment. A way of luring us into a trap which mirrors the downfall of the film’s protagonist. The downfall of society. Because what happened? How did we go from a character driven story into a gunfight that lasts an hour? Evil. 
     I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with action movies. But in Cloud there is a distinct moment when everyone Yoshii’s slighted wronged shows up to enact their vengeance that we have to ask ourselves wait what happened? It’s one of the most abrupt tonal shifts in cinema. We’ve been shanghaied.  Can you still say shanghaied? From being immersed in this character driven narrative we are enjoying effortlessly we are blindsided by some pretty big asks. As in asking us to believe all these losers have resorted to 80s action movie revenge because they lost some money on ebay.
     I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Cloud for doing this either. My favorite part about this whole thing is the guy with the lynch mob mask. I have this strong conviction about technology’s effect on society specifically what I feel like starts with the automobile how that bubble of anonymity facilitates the means whereby people honk or flip off really rude behavior because of it. Web even worse. Dark stuff.
 
And Cloud has yet another big ask when you have to decide how you feel about Yoshii in the end. There’s this disavowal mechanism where the characters he harms turn out to be the greater evil. Or so the film flexibly allows such an interpretation. Cloud even splits the shadow half into SANO. Tempting us even more with the excuse maybe Yoshii isn’t all bad.
     Hell I don’t think he is. If the theorem of Cloud is integration of shadow + ethical compromise = success. And we can visibly read the remorse in the Yoshii character. Then we can only assume we are presented with the question of him being good right as he asks himself the same thing. We don’t know what he does after all this goes down. And the films wisely leaves it unanswered. 
     But if there’s one thing Kiyoshi Kurosawa has consistently used in so many other of his films it’s the expressionist process. When I say process I don’t mean to sound didactic or condescending but for the sake of clarity I mean in film production whenever you shoot a shot of an automobile and in reality it isn’t being driven by the person behind the wheel but is supposed to look like it is on camera it’s called poor man’s process. Some special effects person or a grip might say push the car a little. Or it can be pulled out on the road then it’s called a process trailer. 
     Anyway Kiyoshi Kurosawa almost always shoots poor man’s process with an opaque transparency serving as an ambiguous soft light for the window behind often a passenger or passengers on a bus. Think Cure. But later he also uses a process with artificial what I mean when I say expressionistic skies. The thunderstorms golden mixing with dark in the final scene in Cloud suggests the apocalypse. Or again the downfall of society. So in that sense it does answer the question for us.
     But the tragedy for me is I still see Yoshii as an unwitting victim. Maybe that means I’m in denial and just as bad?

Was child trafficking real?

Why was part of my higher education learning to write a compare and contrast essay? What’s even the point of those? Feels like a lazy mistake of film criticism. If you think anyone cares about hearing you compare and contrast Serpent’s Path (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) with its remake you’re too stupid. 

     Although I was surprised to find that Serpent’s Path (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) almost entirely jettisons its predecessor. The plot points you do remember when they recur are modified. There’s still a dirty tile room for the questioning. And a lush verdant ext for the bad guy abduction. For the remainder of this post when I say Serpent’s Path I’m gonna solely be referring to the 2024.

Serpent’s Path takes all the fun out of the revenge genre. For that alone it shoulda been awarded a Nobel Prize. As far as the narrative goes the plot removes all ambiguity. The tone of this is heavy.
     Oppressively. Paralyzing. When ALBERT BACHELET flutters tickled giddy throwing LAVAL’S food on the ground we aren’t laughing with him. That moment is horror manifest. After we’ve seen the ending and put it all together we’ve become complicit in the trauma. This is a moral indictment. Made all too uncomfortable not by being explicit but rather by its restrained deliberate tone and execution. The audacity with which what and how Serpent’s Path chooses to leave out is stunning. Perfection. Perfected.
     It leaves out the sensationalization of punishment scenes and in doing so dismantles the revenge genre. But it spells everything out plotwise. Not through exposition dumps but enough. It’s here and now and real. Child trafficking. The foundation. The circle. Deborah Minar. With the state of current real life sensationalist shock scandal frenzy conspiracy glut I’m surprised more people haven’t seen this movie.
     Not exaggerating the scariest thing about Serpent’s Path for me even me boasting I’m not one to be scared by movies the climax in that warehouse. It troubles me beyond gore menace deranged villains or any conceivable aesthetics of cinematic evil. When that guy JAKE is killed then all of the sudden this devious twist implicit maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy what the hell? All those sweet wholesome innocent looking little kids looking like they’re fine in some daycare with this really sweet teacher. 
     The sweet teacher who explains to Albert and subsequently more importantly for our benefit the truth behind what really happened to his daughter. You didn’t love that girl. That girl hated her parents. You told me to consult Deborah is overwhelmingly subversive. Truly unsettling. The stuff that resonates. That I can’t shake. Why does that teacher have to be so sweet oh god? Genius.

Oh wait. There’s also this abduction of CHRISTIAN in a gym that’s so realistic it has to be my new favorite fight scene in a movie. It’s sloppy. The way it’s choreographed timed and how hard they have to earn it by making it look so natural is the equivalent of cinema at its finest. Figuring out new better ways to do something like a fight scene already suffering from overly-familiar fatigue.

All you've done is talk about yourself?

Everyman existential middle class pretty much set perfect life family check shelter check security check but stuck hitting your upward mobility ceiling the monotony dissatisfaction of it all smothering you depicted designed manifested as abstract horror is what Chime (2024, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa do so well. Everything about Chime is so clean staged sterile cool blue theory aesthetic average it invents itself as an image system through which the messy visceral outbursts of incomprehensible reprehensible violence evoke the morality of our repressed frustrations with the inessential we bury just beneath our surface. 

     So that’s why the most amazing shot in Chime the dude walking across the bridge high wide crane tracking ext has such an impact. Chime is the promise of cinema we’d hoped for because its economy of purpose doesn’t waste a thing. Each moment is sparse yet charged with significance to be decoded. Even the protagonist a just only slightly good enough cook to teach yet not head chef has the lifelong acquired experience to prepare a course for all to enjoy. Until you discover the tragedy at its soul. 

     Chime is the film I’ve been waiting for my entire life because it does what no other film I’ve ever seen has been able to. It makes slow exciting. Riveting. It demands you to think without spelling everything out until you feel that it already has. The horror of Chime is people who don’t have any reason to worry about their lives. That’s the kind of twist that wakes me up from my cinematic slumber. When that main character bombs his interview the random patron who tries to stab the other diner comparatively isn’t as disturbing. Although we’re made to assume each chime breakdown is the same for everyone we just get made to experience one man’s.

 

What about all the stuff we don’t see? The ghost of AKEMI visiting the academy. What does the teacher see offscreen that we don’t early on the first time he looks toward the entrance to the academy outside? A premonition of what’s to come? What’s the significance of that part of the house with the junk hoard beyond the fringe curtain that precipitates his breakdown? And what does he see when he confronts the terror out on the street? This is the abstract doom we too are confronted with manifested for us to feel.

     Remaining thoughts just gotta throw out there the el train established outside the academy to be used as int strobe light source through window as ominous supernatural capacity rocks. The final climax we get to hear the two note melody door chime is my favorite type of use of establishing sound design and use of familiar liminal nightmare instrument. The way the teacher’s descent shifts to another grain field that makes us feel like we’ve returned to film this is the end.

4/5/2026 4/8/2026 Plaza Theatre

Atlanta, GA

Crate expectations

I have a strong aversion to protagonists who lack moral ambiguity. I mean too perfect. Passively condescending. Arrogant. Delusional. Too close to real life how there are those self-righteous hypocrites whose squeaky-clean ethos is oppressively untenable. 

     Golden Age in Hollywood is where I find all the best templates. Lang paranoia. Screwball love grifters cheats prostitutes toxic matches. Wilder romanticized waif discarded sexpot suicidal self-destructive slighted emotional map of how the heart feels.

Wife of a Spy (2020, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is one part smug oh look at how perfect we are couple. Especially the husband YUSAKO. But then it clicks it’s period appropriate. Especially the genre. Back in the Forties we wanted to see couples who were a more perfect version of ourselves. Do gooders. The life of means manners and marriage we should aspire to. It took me a while though with Yusako’s recurring defense I’m not a spy I’m acting out of my own self-interest I’m such a good person schtick. 
     But there’s more to what these period genre conventions are hiding. In Wife of a Spy the timeline has everything to do with the chronology of the War. The couple start out just as the history of cinema started out just as the world started out idealistic. Then comes the war. Then comes the darkness. Cynicism. Suspicion. Betrayal. Paranoia. Atrocities.
     What makes this strand of espionage suspense distinct unfamiliar and different striking off guard is its political stance. Because back then wartime means nationalism. Or at the very least civic duty. Chip in. Do your part. Maybe I’m naïve but I can’t think of any correlative frame of reference where the hero is so unpatriotic. Leaking information treason aiding enemies. But the empire of the sun looms ominously in the shadows as perpetrator of mass war crimes gradually methodically exposed infecting our moral codes as audience with its own akin to biological plague weaponized arc.
 
This hybridization of period and modern genre codes achieves the perfect pitch blending nostalgic sentimental escapism with disillusionment destruction detached no simple resolution profound disjointed culmination of enlightened despair. SATOKO wandering away from us into the air raid night with her country her life her psyche burning to the ground. The film and she don’t let her country of the hook either.
   We are meant to feel what she feels. And do. That’s what Wife of a Spy manages to achieve. We mourn that Yusako wasn’t portrayed as the kind of hero period propaganda would have dictated all the more because reality has sunk in by then. And we redefine our notions of heroism and projected outcomes with a little more weight because of it.

Less a fun park ride than some kind of propaganda exercise

Japanese woman films travelogue in Uzbekistan for television. Is To the Ends of the Earth (2019, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) as boring as its premise would suggest? Excrutiatngly yes.

 

Ruminative search for place. Identity. Yawn. First half has some mildly amusing tensions based on the sexism YOKO is subjected to from the Uzbek guides along with the irony of the sexism her team the Japanese production harbor. 
     Warm and fuzzy feminine. Conflict of ethics over the purchase of and intended liberation of a goat. Third act seems to be the fulfilling payoff success of finding Chorsu Bazaar subject to make the show a smash. But then authorities apprehend Yoko for filming where it’s not allowed. False alarm. Everything’s ok. Back home a huge refinery fire in Tokyo Bay. Is Yoko’s bf dead? False alarm. He’s ok. But we’re not. The heavy dose of obligatory drama feels insufferable. How much more can she endure becomes how much more can we endure. 
     At least Okoo is ok. To the Ends of the Earth has its charm. But it doesn’t work tonally structurally thematically or have any worthwhile sense of purpose enough to give us a reason for watching it.

Love is nothing more than a weak painkiller sentimental fake comfort

Wow I see the first Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie that I hated and its follow up turns out to be as if he remade it in a way that more closely corresponds to my own desires. Uncanny.

 

In Before We Vanish (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) three aliens are sent to comprehend concepts from humans set up a communication device to convey its completion then await invasion however one of them has difficulty taking the concept of love. He stumbles into a church where cute children give their answers. A charismatic priest provides the definitive love chart from the Gospel. Finally the alien’s surrogate wife shows him. So once the entire alien species find out what love is to humans they call off the invasion. Most sentimental optimistic life affirming possible outcome. 
     In Foreboding (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) same basic arc. But this time at the end the alien MAKABE through seeking to gain the concept of love ultimately sees that it’s a delusion gimmick masking humanity’s fear of death and as far as their aims at coexisting and loving one another they’ve failed. Their entire our entire civilization remains on the verge of death. Invasion time. World annihilation. The end.
 
No seriously as much as I hated Before We Vanish I completely adore delighted in loved Foreboding. Before We Vanish has this bombastic whimsy quirk romcom score set on bright sunny days. Foreboding has a scarce ambient track menace gloomy dark funeral march feel to it.
     Foreboding is set in a hospital. TATSUO has this line like you should get out of here a hospital is not a healthy place. Sources point to this being extracted from a longer five hour version I’d love to see some day. But its focus is narrowed to fewer characters. Mostly Makabe and ETSUKO. Its tone is a consistent psychological horror that feels every bit as scary as if it really were the end of the world.
     If you look close enough you could maybe see Etsuko’s endurance resilience in the face of the apocalypse striving to save her husband. But no. I see it as bleak. She’s working in some crappy just above sweatshop conditions hospital job her husband is a janitor nervous wreck spineless murderer turned dope addict. That’s what breaks my heart the most. Probably my favorite aspect of the plot. By the end I don’t see Tatsuo as anything more than a junkie desperate clinging to Etsuko because she literally holds his next fix in her pocket. Now that’s an apt symbolic dynamic for what holds a loving couple together. The ending makes literal the lyrics from one of my favorite Charli xcx songs. Love of my life selling all the drugs that I like.

Metaphysical linguistics lessons

First speedbump through my Kiyoshi Kurosawa run. This one didn’t do it for me.

 

So what do we got workin here? In Before We Vanish (2017, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) its tone manages to strike that whole satirical Earth is not worth saving well enough. As cynical as generating more sincere empathy for the SHINZY alien than any of the humans. 
     Maybe that’s what makes me remiss in formulating any critical appreciation of Before We Vanish. The motor is too recognizable for me and it has a certain forbearer that is such a prominent crucial work so dear to my heart entire emotional cinematic composition that I could never look past the Karen Allen of it all.
    
The other all too super familiar trope is the learning alien whose data is the humans he encounters. It’s been mined well and often. As a gag. For all the time we spend watching the central conceit of the movie the three aliens taking concepts from humans it never even comes close to a laugh. Or interesting. It’s like auditing a preschool class.
 
The petite highschool girl fighting huge dudes is rad enough. But weighed against everything else so what? Similarly though when she goes up against a gang of mercenaries in an isolated warehouse once she gets her hands on that grease gun it’s on. Any scenes with AKIRA TACHIBANA sociopath wave of mutilation cute precocious oblivious unstoppable are fun yes.
     The narrative stakes just aren’t there. What payoff that might have redeemed the slog we’d invested our attention into proves illusory. Okay sorry I am such a sourpuss here but for the love of Karen Allen please.

The secret of the dark room

Emotionally macabre. The scary thing is how does this film get me to empathize to actually truly feel the sorrow and sadness for these deplorable pathetic irredeemably selfish toxic deranged lost souls?

 

Daguerrotype (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a gothic ghost story through which Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to themes of men with obsessive inabilities to relinquish their chokehold on the past on a woman on their delusional fragile identities lost intwined therein. Who cares right?
     Me. I’m into these loser goth boy crybaby fables. So emo. The dark room is such a great image system in Daguerrotype. It’s STÉPHANE HEGRAY’S troubled psyche. Stéphane has this fixation on daguerreotypes as a figurative manifestation of his paralyzing desire to preserve a foregone past ultimately to the point beyond which it may even have existed. A past where he seeks to objectify immobilize immortalize the women in his life closest to him. And as he’s losing his hold on it he drinks himself away losing his hold on reality on himself on his health on life.
     But this dark room image system also serves a secondary function. JEAN is this young either too lazy or too desperate to earn an honest living drifter type whose morally polluted psyche is just as dark as Stéphane’s. Daguerrotype lays out this whole climate of young men not being able to find any work resorting to drastic means giving up or compromising to survive. Again this unemployment horror is more profoundly disturbing than Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supernatural flourishes but they’re not competing they’re in balance with one another. I just can’t resist stressing how effective they are.
     So in contrast the other image system is MARIE as bright room. In the second half notice how she literally brightens the room with gold light when Jean goes there. But there’s also the contrast between her father Stéphane’s passion hobby this cold inanimate poison antique with hers botany nurturing this living regenerative life giving delicate greenhouse. And of course the outcome of improper disposal of the waste from the mercury.
 
When photographing Marie why does Stéphane build that life size daguerreotype though? The answer probably isn’t worth spelling out. That’s the kind of ambiguity Kiyoshi Kurosawa is master of. Does Stéphane actually see the ghost of Marie? Why doesn’t Jean? Why do we hear her say Dad? Who was the young woman the appraiser sees upstairs? DENISE?
     The tragic irony is in the dark room the master passes down everything to the apprentice. The powerful way it does so is it’s unbeknownst to Jean until it’s too late. And even then he probably never realizes it. Covering it up burying it under his own self-delusion. Psychologically so on point it stays with you the antithesis of beauty. 

motives patterns and continuity

Shochiku. Lavish production values. First of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s late masterpieces. There’s always been something about the police procedural genre of movies that has this familiar cozy nostalgic inviting intellectual sensation of relaxed paced learning where the journey is the reward as much as if not more than the outcome.

     Creepy (2016, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is a studio movie. Wall to wall emotional underscoring emphasizes the suspense cuing us when and how to respond. Instantly and thoroughly accessible engaging. Broad. Unabashedly crowd pleasing. Until it isn’t.
 

The procedural makes detectives of us all. At that house in Hino City who were those five bodies? Or for that matter this might be obnoxious of me to ask but if they were vacuum sealed in those body bags why does NOGAMI have that repulsive retch smell reaction in the house? It’s the three Hondas and two Mizutas right? No these questions aren’t important. Aren’t as compelling as.
     What hold does NISHINO have over MIO? When he gives her Nogami’s gun we notice how she doesn’t for a second seem to consider using it on him. How does she still go to school every day?  Why wasn’t SAKI HONDA susceptible to Nishino’s influence even though the rest of her family was? How was she allowed to live? What does she remember? 
     Before I get any further it’s worth mentioning that Creepy isn’t grounded in the verisimilitude of what we might call the real world nor is its logic what we might call accessible. It’s cinematic which is better. Embrace artifice and you won’t be disappointed. The ways the lives of Mio Saki YASUKO and TAKAKURA are affected is what’s relevant here. 
 
Nishino is the embodiment of Evil. He only wears black. He only gets others to enact his heinous crimes. Although never called heroin by name he uses so called shots to enslave his victims. This figure through cinema is a symbol of the psychological anomaly in society that makes men evil. 
     But the big twist thematic conceit of the film is what does pure evil really want? To have his own happy family. To live right next door to you. To have the perfect little life we all want. And that’s what’s so scary. Antisocial Personality Disorder psychopath doesn’t fit the profile categories of motives patterns or continuity because he wants to be just like you. 
     As trad as Creepy starts off the second half and into the final act the façade shatters. Just like Nishino. And it will be because he pushes it too far. Just as the narrative does. The narrative transgresses by pushing us too far. It operates on our limits until we can’t take anymore either. It doesn’t play fair. 
 
The circumstances under which we may observe Nishino preying upon Yasuko is sublime. There are two key scenes between just she and he where the color is boosted. The greens of the grass and skintones saturated for a brief moment in this otherwise subdued washed out palette. Why? Even the filmmaking techniques are pushed too far.
 
In closing some movie nerd miscellany. In that trope scene where Nishino and Takagawa see who can get Yasuko to choose between them the cut does this thing I know Kiyoshi Kurosawa does in his later work I have been obsessed with for a while and haven’t spoken with anyone else about or read about in any helpful way but I wanna call it a match reverse.
     Specifically a wide where the perspective although it may contain depth is flat in the sense of frontal geometrically even horizontally. So when it cuts to the reverse each of the bodies of the characters are shown in the exact same size of the previous composition and placement in said previous frame. My guess is they have a video playback person put an overlay on the image to achieve this. I don’t know if I’m even properly describing this. But anyways. 
     Also around the midpoint when Nogami opens that sliding heavy metal door it totally gives The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper) iconic vibes. Even more so because like in that movie he enters without being invited in and no one is around. That hypnotic yellow pinwheel fan spinning. If I said it was reminiscent of the Texas tower windmills I’d be pushing it too far.

Finally a movie that shows how great suicide is

Tender sweet as a marshmallow over a crackling campfire. Childlike innocence imbued picaresque extended sleepovers ghost romance syllabus of spirituality.

 

The profound thesis of Journey to the Shore (2015, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is calm down even though I committed suicide it has nothing to do with you I did it for my own personal reasons I still love you watch me prove it to you. Its themes are how crucial resolution is to our spirit. 
     If Kiyoshi Kurosawa films tend to end with a symbolic or implied sense of where its characters are headed Journey to the Shore would be a sunset. Literally it has a sunset montage. With a dose of sentimental Hollywood-lite rom-com schmaltzy whimsicality indulging fantasy what life could have been playing house potential possibilities that never existed the film is exceedingly beautiful. Broken up into three parts Newspaper followed by Gyoza Maker then Physics Professor each conceals an underlying troublemaker antagonist in need of redemption. 
     The midpoint is when MIDORI gives into this flaw herself. Her insecurity turns to paranoia over TOMOKO which then backfires and turns into a bitterness not of a woman rival but of a woman she envies. The identical composition frontal direct reverse coverage heavy handedly suggests to us these two women are one and the same. But I doubt it’s just me who sees an unspoken spiteful arrogance in Tomoko’s delivery? Ultimately what this brings up is the withering motif Kiyoshi Kurosawa uses.
     How blissful the deterioration of the SHIMAKAGE flower wall is in contrast to Midori’s alarm waking her from her dream into nightmare reality disheveled flat and subtle shock horror of her dying houseplants. This cut erases time. When in commune with our spirit there is no such thing as time. 
 
Although we perish. Our bodies do. One day we will see our final sunset. Journey to the Shore is full of questions for us to ask ourselves like did we take care of everything we needed to while alive? Settle everything with our loved ones? Will they be okay after we’re gone? However many billion years old the Earth the Milky Way are they too will wither away yet the universe has only just begun.
     The third act in this spiritualscape has expanded so vastly with the inclusion of the waterfall cave pathway to the dead. When KAORU falls under scrutiny for coming to town on a bus with YASUKE it is now we who are tested as if are we going to now let ourselves be the ones who have to ruin everything by seeing this all as a lie? Kaoru’s husband is becoming something indescribable something hideous because he’s confused.
     Confusion. That husband foreshadows or confronts Midori with the threat of foreshadowing what can happen to her if she falls into this transcendental existential confusion. I think when she meets the ghost of her father he’s headed there too. All of this poison doom so dangerous becomes nothing though when we pass into the wide of that field with Midori and Yasuke walking and all those children play shooting guns at each other. It’s a paradise moment. And we’re ready for the sunset.
     Journey to the Shore is pretty powerful. Stays with you. It haunts us with our own regrets. If forces us to ask ourselves what we hold onto that we shouldn’t? What should we let go of?

Christie Smith SS26 Fashion Show

Were you apprehensive worried by the trailers that this looks too colorful too chaotic like a Joel Schumacher Batman mess? I was. Don’t worry. It’s not. 

 

I Love Boosters (2026, Boots Riley) is the kind of comedy Hollywood should have been making the whole time since the Golden Age. It’s also unbridled imagination hyperartificial final solution to the what if question. 
     Like Golden Age screwball the comedy is the delivery system yet it has to be backed up by a character story. Clear as can be CORVETTE is against CHRISTIE SMITH. I Love Boosters is a Keke Palmer vehicle and rightly so. Has Demi Moore ever played a character anything like this? Her delivery elevates the Christie Smith character’s pseudointellectual narcissist powermad psychobabble cultleader influencer innovator disruptor pop messiah dictator hilariously sparklingly endearingly effective.
     The plot structure again like Golden Age screwball is busy. Hawksian screwball onslaught rambunctious fast-paced. But around the midpoint an element is introduced so unbeknownst unannounced unexpectedly dynamic creative highly conceptual that it shapes the entire latter half into the stuff of awe dream cartoon. Call it what’s in the magic bag. But it’s staggeringly sci-fi impact is purposeful practical relevant pays off and far less convoluted oversaturated needlessly complicated as the multiverse trope problem plaguing the franchise houses. And speaking of Hollywood glut mediocre cashgrab comicbook slogs how does I Love Boosters do so much more and so much better at half the runtime? 
 
The art direction’s intentionally excessive color palette is more aggressively monochromatic than anything since production designer director Bo Welch’s The Cat in the Hat (2003). But it serves the unified aesthetic of its milieu as extension of its subject matter. Fashion. Low class urban bitches. With all due respect to urban bitches.
     Does the ending work? As far as Corvette’s story yes adequately. About the political messages? There aren’t any silly this is an entertainment. And it’s intelligent. Like the way Hollywood used to be good at.
 
In closing. Random bits. The wall to wall expressionistic aggressive art score fits well. And the LaKeith Stanfield recurring plot device character offering soliciting the answers to the meaning of life’s questions along with accompanying leitmotif acoustic therapeutic escape is just that much more reason as a whole I Love Boosters is evidently every bit and more the comedy I dreamed it’d be.

4/21/2016 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

The holiday resort development is destroying Hikone Island

Sci-fi Freudian potboiler odyssey into unconscious into subconscious repressed trauma mystery romance. Real (2012, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) is languid with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ability to maintain a consistent tone of existential dread doom escaping reality self-delusion ominous swirling whirlpool of oblivion in the best possible way.

 

Its tone is everything. Crappy low-budge cgi effects is better than spectacularly hi-tech effects any day. It’s more scary. It’s more fun. The disintegrating before our very eyes ATSUMI swiss cheese moment is more emotionally resonant. The philosophical zombies AI slop is the worst unsettling best way Real traps us in artificial horror.
     The confusing foggy narrative structure aims at conveying the labyrinth of our psychological emotional intrapersonal universe. How do you uncover a mystery that’s built out of fog? Does Atsumi’s dad chiding KOICHI about the irreversibly destructive damage his parents did to this place fifteen years ago have a clear analog irl? Does it need to? Does it matter?
     Also what’s the timeline here? Atsumi and Kiochi are twenty-five and met when they were ten? When all the stuff went down? That’s a lot of baggage. The Kiyoshi Kurosawa sunshine peering through motif recurring in this film tells us their future is bright though. After two hours of toxic sludge excavation what does that say about life though?

Can I start all over again?

Claustrophobic somber bleak domestic melodrama. Existential undertow dragging you into the abyss. Dive right in. How did the resolution in Tokyo Sonata (2008, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) make you feel? Cathartic? Exhilarated? Or worst. Life affirming? Okay have fun with that.

 

The mom holds everything together. Tokyo Sonata is about power structures. Dismantling authority. Or keeping up appearances in order to preserve said authority. Or in its nuanced portrait of this nuclear family both.
     The climax Tokyo Sonata builds to is the mother father and youngest son all make an attempt to escape but are unable to as if they have a biological shock collar that prevents them from doing so. The moral paradox society is built on values encompassing family and government yet despite what happens when these are corrosive destructive within they still serve their purpose. And dare I say a greater good. Structurally there’s some fun stuff to delve into.
     The obvious is the contrast between the dad hiding losing his job and the youngest son hiding taking piano lessons. The dad going from salaryman breadwinner to bum is a variation of an anxiety Kiyoshi Kurosawa mines on other occasions. And it remains more unsettling than his supernatural existential horror. But there’s a huge twist here. Just observe where he’s at after that four months later jump and you’ll see what I mean. Anyway the mom seeing the dad at the hobocamp and discovering that the youngest son has been spending his lunch money on piano also feels like she’s in some remote way analogous to the uh USA.
     The mom collects intelligence. How? Unlike the dad she crosses borders. Like the US invading Afghanistan and Iraq she goes into both of their sons’ rooms. This sets up the uproarious irony that she actually succeeds in her campaigns whereas the oldest son literally joining up with the US Army deployed to the Middle East let’s say not so much.
     There’s also somewhat of an ironic twist with the home invasion brigand played by Kôji Yakusho. It’s like out of desperation the mom runs off with him only to be confronted with the harsh truth that he’s a failure at business and impotent so basically her husband. And that he’s a misanthrope and antisocial so basically her youngest son. Fate the architect of what it’s to be for her and there’s no escape. Although this does provide the catalyst for her arc growth assimilation acceptance appreciation.
 
Clearly the moral in the end of Tokyo Sonata is instead of trying to run away out of desperation and start over with a brand new life escaping your miserable old one what you really ought to do is love life and see that each new sunrise is an opportunity to start over by trying to do better. To be better. And how isn’t this life affirming?
     Because it’s too late. The authority has already been undermined. Even for me some of the ultradarkest humor is when the doc bandages up the youngest son the dad pushed down a flight of stairs says he has a concussion but otherwise he’s fine. Talking about a concussion like he skinned his knee falling of a tricycle. Think about it why after the boy’s finished with the recital does no one applaud?
 
Okay yes I guess my dark sense of humor is too morbid but get a load of how the mom has a nightmare of the oldest son coming home from the Middle East PTSD morally shattered because of killing too many people. Then the reality turns out far worse. Irony of ironies the mom reads that letter from the oldest son and the tone could be described as quaint perhaps we find out along with her that he’s doing well after being sent home by the Army.
     Except he instead chooses to join up with Islamic Extremist terrorists in Iraq just to get to learn what it’s like for them. I’m sorry that’s still the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

Little earthquakes

Tender heartwrenching nihilism tragedy. Mark Retribution (2006, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) slowburn burntout police procedural that turns out to be a ghost story whose thesis is boomer deranged psychopath mental asylum patient as the result of gentrification enacts full scale mass murder serial killer plot against the entire city.

     Such desperation is to be found in the source of the murder impulse here. Specifically the way Psychoghost is prisoner by her own decision in the liminal black soot sanitarium and each of her proxies were passengers on the Bayside Ferry commuters the only albeit distant contact with life outside. And if you put on your thinking cap this is a big outside motif here. As in outside of the awareness of abuse. Outside of mental illness. Outside of social interpersonal connection. You know stuff like that. Yet through a glass darkly in the blink of an eye we see her.

 
The homicidal cue that plagues the instruments of Psychoghost’s homicidal wrath stems from the vulnerability through which it’s channeled. Nobody notices me. So the variety of unsettling Kiyoshi Kurosawa conjures in Retribution is unreliable morality. And the ending is a knockout.
     Psychoghost’s spirit control killings are breadcrumbs to lead detective YOSHIOKA Kôji Yashuko to her. Most J-horror ghost stories much like our modern age of social media just want their voices to be heard. And the resolution we seem to get is that Psychoghost chose the detective because he probably something like morbidly refused to let go of his wife HARUE who as it turns out we didn’t know the whole time was also a ghost. So the super messed up ending is really Harue has to accept that although the detective has finally moved on which means she will no longer have to be his ghostwife he will most definitely be helping with Psychoghost’s killing spree.
     Yet most unsettling of all is we are never told what happened to Harue. That’s a choice. It’s intentional. It’s beyond ambiguous. It’s withheld. The floral dress print remains figure lying face down on the floor of the detective’s flat with the braided hair is most definitely the body of a child. I love that a dark secret can be a dark secret. It doesn’t matter what happened to Harue what matters is what it’s done to the detective. Except something else crazy to think about is Psychoghost probably knows and might even have added to her reasons for choosing him.
 
The other homicides are crucial. To repeat myself yet again it’s to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s strengths of somehow granting importance lived in character dynamic verisimilitude everyday relatability to all of his however small of their role supporting characters. Even though we know the impulse driving them is misguided rantings of a psychopath I still empathize if not condone at least what SAKUMA does.
     The doctor whose kid bullies him how can you not? When that snotty punk rudely asks his doctor dad for a hundred used syringes to pay off an upperclassman at the high school brings the gentrification angle into a parallel for degradation of society class family values. And I feel for the schlub. When schlub dad rams the plunger of anesthetics into the kid I swear the emotional underscoring facilitates relief disavowal approval resolution Retribution.

Midori swamp mummy

Lest my critical reach exceed my grasp Loft (2005, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) doesn’t play by the rules because the male impulse violence towards women doesn’t either. Two archetypes victim and aggressor. The timeworn inability for either of these two to recognize accept avoid or atone for their own accountability in this dynamic is used to foment the confusion we experience as viewer.

     Loft unravels two competing narratives. Is it about a thousand year old mummy who seems to be able to move around on her own when no one’s looking? Or is it about a murdered college girl who’s come back in a black dress in ghost form seeking a reconciliation for the fate she suffered? Think you can figure it out? Because on top of that there’s the impossible to answer question of who killed the college girl? Oh you’ll get answers. The problem is you get one too many.

The only way I can begin to make sense of Loft is if from across a vast distance the opening scene when REIKO coughs up black mud it’s the mummy drawing her to the rapey bnb to expose the tall dark stranger who somehow has to stand trial as being held accused of centuries of male abuse assault denial getting away scot free showing no outward remorse using his looks and charm to elude justice and prolong the cycle ensuring the threat of perpetrating said atrocities on the next victim until he’s stopped. I think the archetypes reappear as familiar patterns because they’re interchangeable between those who are good and evil. The morality is gray. In real life it’s this sense of this happens to all of us not only the other. Or in other words it begs us to relate to these participants more closely.
     Reiko finds that the rapey bnb she boards is where the college girl was housed by Reiko’s publisher KIJIMA who full on first degree MeTooed her we’re talking grooming sexual harassment employer employee power imbalance quid pro quo lucrative advancement dangling sexual assault murder dispose of the body type. And he has designs on pulling the same on Reiko obvi. Easy enough to follow yeah?
     Except the tall dark stranger YOSHIOKA not only sees Kijima murder her which now forces us to question the chronological order of where we thought we were in the timeline but the tall dark stranger after intervening and attempting to save her all of the sudden asks her if she’s the mummy. This sequence I submit as proof citing Loft utilizes these key elements of ambiguity to translate a sense of self denial and how physical romantic attraction and morality abnegate the culpability of the roles of individuals in these schemes.
     Finally my final entry in this line of questioning is the continually reoccurring instances of being misled into false endings. It seems like things are finally okay happily ever after but seldom or in the case of Loft never the case. One particular is so self consciously over the top Hollywood romantic swell score you see it coming a mile away. Good. Someone should for once. 
 
What’s scary is how far Reiko goes to accept forgive and forget about all the insanely heinous crap the tall dark stranger has done. He’s like I killed that girl she’s like cool no biggie. Hell in this movie I even almost wanna give the guy a pass. He’s that suave. Even though he lives with a thousand year old corpse he technically’s supposed to not remove from the institute in her environment controlled habitat but he instead sprits her to his home and constantly takes to hacking her up to find out if she’s full of mud.
     Okay so the mud. I wanna say the rich twenty year old hot corpse who while she was alive ingested hundreds of gallons of mud until her stomach and lungs exploded just to preserve her youthful beauty may have an agenda that broadens beyond revenge against abusive men. Not that that isn’t a huge part of it. I just kind of care more about her than any other character. When she’s shown for the first time and she doesn’t have eyes is one of the scariest things I ever seen. It troubles me but also desperately makes me wish someone would have saved her.
     I think the hotttie corpse is a good woman. And the black dress ghost is evil. As a man I want to save the hottie corpse but if a man would want to save black dress ghost she’d scoff at them as she openly declares her motives she wants to take them to hell. Yet each are victims of the same fate. Each perpetrated by a mirror effect good guy and a bad guy to a certain extent. Loft haunts me with the questions is there a difference morally to the fates of the hottie corpse and the black dress ghost? Is the publisher any worse than the tall dark stranger?

Become a bug

Personally there’s one type of horror movie I hold in the highest regard. It’s those that are relatable for me and express something found in my everyday existence but turn it into something extraordinary supernatural sci-fi or occult. The benchmark has always been Trouble Every Day (2001, Claire Denis). 
     Lately I’ve come to realize belatedly Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Stanely Kubrick) is a horror film. That along with Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me (1992, David Lynch) both have this emotional accessibility frightening reality relevance yet separate from what I found in Trouble Every Day. I mean I’m not going to get too personal here gross but Trouble Every Day has some insight into this secret internal woven into the very fabric of my nature portentous confrontational excavation tool at its disposal.
     Where else can I find more of that I’ve kept asking. Just did. In some low budge almost skipped it J-horror little oddity treasure jackpot from the early aughts.

House of Bugs (2005, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) presents two distinct parallel narratives each subjective and contrary to one another. He said she said. And they’re both unreliable. Oh and even better nonlinear. 
     The plot centers around a married couple codependent toxic manipulative creatures through which mutual attraction is depicted as predatory emotionally abusive complete submission control captive prisoners the only way to win is who is able to cut the other from life and prey upon their trapped helpless vegetable lump powerless form in their own sordid little nest of psychological depravity. Seldom have I enjoyed the thrill of finding something as relatable. 
     This vintage J-horror elevated domestic entanglement horror shares its dna with the finest of Golden Age Hollywood screwball comedies. Cinema to express not love not romance but the reality of the dark emotional undercurrents between couples vying for the upper hand. There’s something so crucial cathartic about the exaggeration. Nothing exceeds like excess. Okay chronologically between Golden Age screwball and this also the reason I’m so hyped probably too is I been rewatching this wonderful entry into said canon called The War of the Roses (1989, Danny DeVito).
     It pulls us in begs us to take sides as it does to its peripheral characters. We along with they as in real life are all but pawns currency to gain leverage. If the stakes in screwball are emotional. In The War of the Roses financial. In House of Bugs they’re psychological. And it would be easy to say with Kiyoshi Kurosawa isn’t it always but he has sidestepped into displaying quite the competency when communing with our spirituality in other instances. 
 
Best of all you can’t trust either of them. Nor can anyone else. Nor can they trust each other. There’s well trodden cliché tradition of a lying is necessary in a marriage yet I’ve never seen thusfar a film that satirizes that to such extremes before. That’s what’s so scary about this. And why Kiyoshi Kurosawa is so good at having it be the engine that he runs this suspense horror with.