KATIE MARIE

Delusions

Today I am writing to you to tell you about Marebito, which is a Japanese horror film (you know how much I love these). Marebito translates as Unique One and came out in 2004.

Before I go into this, a warning, this is a film with a twist and if you read this said twist will be spoiled. Going into this film blind is probably the best way to experience it in my honest opinion.

Also, trigger warnings for violence, blood drinking, and holding women captive.

Plot

The film opens with its main character Masuoka, a freelance cameraman who carries his camera absolutely everywhere.

He is obsessed with fear after witnessing a brutal suicide whereby a terrified man, Kuroki, stabbed himself in the eye. Masuoka is obsessed with the emotional state of fear, what the man who died must have been feeling in order to mutilate himself so violently.

Masuoka descends into an underground section of the city where he is warned about the Deros.

Aside: For more info on the Deros see the Shaver Mystery, but in a nutshell, this comes from Richard Sharpe Shaver who in 1943 wrote to Amazing Stories Magazine with a theory of ancient but extremely advanced prehistoric races that lived in cavern cities inside the Earth before abandoning Earth for another planet because the sun messed them up. However, before these ancient peeps buggered off, they left some of their kids. Some of these kids were noble and pure they stayed reasonably human and were called Teros, while others degenerated into mentally impaired sadistic creatures called Deros.

Masuoka meets the ghost of Kuroki and learns more about the underworld. He also finds a village in the underground where he comes across a naked girl chained to a wall who he rescues. He takes said girl back to his flat but she won’t eat, drink or speak. Masuoka calls her F and gets a bit obsessed with her; he sets up cameras so he can watch her from his phone when he’s not in the flat.

On one occasion while Masuoka is out, he checks the camera and sees F speaking to someone off screen. When he returns, he sees a woman in yellow outside his flat, and notices 12 seconds of his camera footage has vanished. Masuoka gets a threatening phone call.

Later Masuoka is injured while out an on returning figures out the F lives off of blood when she licks the blood from his cut finger. He decides to keep feeding her, bringing her dead animals.

Masuoka is next confronted by the woman in yellow who seems to think F is Masuoka’s daughter. When Masuoka goes home the flat has been broken into and F is gone. While out looking for her he bumps into a man in black who speaks to him telepathically about F. The man’s telepathic voice matches the threatening phone call received earlier. Masuoka goes home to find F there with bloody hands indicating she hurt someone or something while out on her own.

Masuoka has very much started to go off the deep end by this point, murdering the woman in yellow and another girl who he lured to him, drinking their blood to give to F. though the telepathic guy is pleased that Masuoka is taking better care of F now.

At the end of the film, Masuoka eventually admits to himself he has murdered his wife, the woman in yellow, and has been treating his daughter, F, terribly. He allows F to lead him back to the underground section of the city where he will stay.

My Thoughts

Overall, I enjoyed Marebito, its atmospheric, a bit weird and mysterious. It kept me guessing through the film, though I must admit the ending was a bit strange. I found the whole Masuoka’s been mental all along idea pretty well executed, I liked that the woman in yellow now made a lot more sense. But the underground city threw me a bit.

I wasn’t 100% on what it was, was it meant to be real or just in Masuoka’s mind? Did it represent his madness? His despair? His fear? I wish the film had been a little clearer on that point.

Characters 

Masuoka is a great protagonist, he’s fleshed out and we do sympathize with him, even when it is revealed that he has been treating his daughter like an animal and has murdered his wife we still feel some connection with him and his broken mind.

Masuoka, to an extent, acts in a believable manner. Dudes clearly not on the same wavelength as most people, he’s quite happy to wander into a hidden underground city, he sees ghosts, someone committing suicide is interesting rather than tragic etc. but he’s still portrayed well and we can connect to his desire to figure things out and understand what the hell is going on. Though he obviously has his moments where he’s not a lot of fun to watch, setting up cameras to watch the girl you ‘rescued’ is creepy, murdering people and animals to feed to her after deciding to keep her like a pet, obviously not cool. But the mental breakdown he’s going through is portrayed in a compelling way that makes it hard not to watch.

Plot 

I found the plot to be well structured and pretty well paced. We are kept interested in the mystery of what the hell is going on and by the end a lot of the questions have been answered though I was still a bit confused.

I found for the most part the plot was suspenseful, and I very much enjoyed the mystery element. The Lovecraftian inspiration for parts of the story hooked my instantly as they often do. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get more of them, or do more with what we had but it was still good. The stakes were made clear as the story progressed and evolved.

Overall, this will probably not enter into my little hall of fame/favourites but it was still compelling enough to hold me through the story. The third act was a little disappointing probably because it started strong with the reveal that F wasn’t some monster, he found in a cave but his daughter and the woman in yellow was his wife. But honestly the actual ending itself was a little bit of a let-down.