Inugami

Akira, a teacher from Tokyo arrives in a small rural town in Shikoku to start his new job. Soon after arriving, he meets mysterious woman Miki, a papermaker and oldest daughter of the peculiar Bonomiya family. When he starts to hear stories about the family, that they carry the curse of Inugami, he considers it as a silly superstitious talk. But Miki seems getting just younger and more passionate, and hen some freak deaths start to occur. The townspeople grow restless against Bonomiyas. Burn to death such cursed family! And eventually Akira have to join the family to rescue Miki from the hands of her family and the villagers. People get obsessed, Miki sees nightmares and Shikoku gets all foggy.. Stuff we've seen before.. But this time it's the Inugami! Watch out!

Masato Harada is a name I hear rarely these days. After Kamikaze Taxi and Bounce Kogarusu, I haven't heard him much. He did movie called Spellbound in 1999 and Bluestockings in 2005 but somehow I have missed these movies.

Myself I couldn't quite believe my eyes when I saw his name in the DVD cover of Inugami. The DVD edition of Inugami was in the shelf of "horror" and b-class movies, that's where you can find movies like "Azumi" and general Asian horror. I was just putting it back when I saw his name, hidden under the logo of the rental shop. Whoa, did Masato Harada direct this? It has to be interesting. And it kinda is.

Inugami is a kind of mix of horror, artistic documentary style movie, and a folk tale. The horror elements are few, and nothing that strong. Masato Harada directs with slow pace and style. The compositions are well considered, and there is gloomy, sexy feel - colours are amazing and the cinematography is beautiful - you can't usually see so beautiful pace in horror movie.

The characters in Inugami have all their own burdens and Harada does build up the atmosphere very well. There is tension in the air, part of it is sexual tension and part of it is ofcourse the supernatural elements. Inugami in fact doesn't feel like a horror movie so much, maybe because the characters are portrayed so carefully, and the location is lush green Shikoku, in middle of summer. The green forest and nature just doesn't seem scary at all. But I don't think Harada wanted to make this particularly scary movie.

Harada's touch is visible in the erotic, gloomy undertones and details, als well as in his love to his female characters. Miki is the central character, she is beautiful, fragile but powerful and independent too. Much like the girls in Bounce Ko-gals.

Myself I felt though that the movie would be much better if the supernatural part would have been left out totally. The occasional flash backs and weird deaths didn't add anything to the story. If the movie would be simply a story of human beings believing to such old folk myth, and deal with the human emotions and discrimination and all that jazz, it would have been much more interesting, and more complete. Now I felt like Harada didn't know whether to shoot documentary, horror movie or drama. Also there were few foolish acting in some scenes.

But the beautiful end saves the movie. (Do watch the end titles through!) Yuki Amami won Blue Ribbon Award as Best Actress in this movie.

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