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 that exists 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.