#marebito

"They didn't see something that terrified them. They saw something because they were terrified. I want to feel that fear, to see what they did."

Takuyoshi Masuoka is a freelance cameraman who never goes out without a camera. He records everything, and has become obsessed with fear after witnessing ||the suicide of an old man|| in the train station. Descending into the labrynth of tunnels beneath the city, he finds what look to be people, maybe ghosts, who are deeply afraid and walk like animals. And after being warned about the Deros(named after the writings of Richard Sharpe Shaver) by one homeless man, he sees what looks to definitely be a ghost guide him to a cave, where a naked woman lies. One who eats blood, and after being rescued the girl(now referred as "F") needs food which Masuoka will provide.

Directed by Takashi Shimizu and co-written by Chiaki Konaka, if you’re familiar with the later’s work (Serial Experiments Lain, Digimon Tamers, Texhnolyze) you know you’re in for a trip. And you’re still not prepared: the movie is a relentless bombardment of mind-screwing elements involving conspiracy theories, violent murders and mentally disturbed people, all packaged in the obsession of one man who is glued to a camera yet mostly shot with verisimilitude until you don’t know if the man is just crazy or he’s really digging himself deep both literally and metaphorically into a metaphysical rabbithole.

Whatever the case may be, you're just stuck with either someone who is potentially abusive in his madness or that has somehow uncovered a dark reality of how the world actually works which unsurprisingly is not a placid feeling at all. It's obsession with cameras and surveillelance, with trying to make sense out of things through a lens that isn't our own eyes is still resounding, but it's such a deliberately confusing and revolting watch you're decidedly going out with more questions than answers.