It's bananas!!!
What happens when you add the quirky 1970’s with one of Japan’s quirkiest directors? You get an insanely creative film like House. Obayashi Nobuhiko took old elements that go bump in the night and used surrealistic effects to create something new for the time. When Obayashi is in the driver’s seat, hold on because it is going to be one wild ride!Seven school girls travel to spend some time with Gorgeous’ aunt in her huge mansion on a hill. Gorgeous, Fantasy, Professor, Mac, Kung Fu, Sweet, and Melody descend upon the old woman living in her cobweb infested house. One by one the girls go missing as more and more bizarre incidents begin to take place.
The film started out slow as the girls discussed their plans. Gorgeous discovered her dad was getting remarried which propelled her to make the fateful decision to visit her deceased mother’s sister. When the other girls’ plans fell through, they followed Gorgeous. The train and bus rides had almost picture book backgrounds that were obviously fake. Gorgeous told the sad story of her aunt’s lover being killed during WWII with her aunt vowing she would wait for him forever. The story was told in sepia form with the girls all being able to see it. It did not take long for the nightmare to begin once they crossed the mansion’s threshold. A scary old well, creepy clocks, dusty pianos, luminous chandeliers, a skeleton, and an abundance of cat pictures which might normally make the hair on a person’s neck raise took on deadly proportions as the night went on. Obayashi used the special effects of the day and created a few of his own. The special effects were primitive by today’s standards, but this was before George Lucas took effects a giant step forward with Star Wars. Strangely, as gruesome as some of the scenes were, many came across as grotesquely funny and rarely scary.
When Gorgeous was relating her aunt’s story, she and the other girls seemed almost unfamiliar with WWII and the terrible suffering associated with it. Only 30 years out from the war, the girls lived in a peaceful society completely unaware of the price paid for it. The aunt had been unable to let go of her loss and bitterness. Little by little she began to destroy the oblivious young people chaining them to her pain and insatiable hunger. The film turned on its head two common tropes---A man will save us! An adult will save them! This ravenous haunted house hidden in the fog under a full moon had no mercy on anyone.
House is a hard film to define. It was a horror film with a devilish sense of humor. Obayashi seemed to revel in creating a macabre world of the ghostly realm and the teenagers powerless against the inexorable pull of the inevitable. Experimental, weird, and totally bananas (sorry Togo!), House felt like a bad acid trip that shouldn’t have worked but did. Mostly. Screw black cats, I’ll never look at white cats the same.
15 October 2024
Trigger warnings: Dismemberment, so many body parts. Blood
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I recommend this movie if you want a movie that is pretty cheesy, but will keep you somewhat interested. Also recommend it if you are interested in horror films from back then (though I will warn you, it will leave you quite confused and keep you wanting to ask for more questions).
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This review may contain spoilers
It's cheesy, very fever dream like but that's what makes House, House.
I'd expected something else from it, but honestly, I had no idea what I was getting into, and I'm glad for that. It's a perfectly fun watch and you'll have lots of laugh-out-loud moments of slight absurdity (if you're like me anyway). It's very good at doing what it wants to do, which is poking fun at american horror movies and having a bit of fun with it. I slightly wish it did a bit more to conclude it other than just one scene, but it wouldn't feel like such a fever dream if it did. Over all it was a fun ride. I don't think I'll ever find myself rewatching it personally, but I'm sure others will enjoy doing so. Make sure to watch it for yourself. You'll probably have the best experience if you watch it with friends and don't take it seriously. Try it for yourself.-Spoilers beyond this point.
Tons of good practical effects, delivers on a lot of subtle things while also doing the large ones perfectly. The piano eating scene was very legitimately creepy with its tangled limbs, and well worth watching the whole movie for. The special effects done were, unfortunately, funny rather than scary in the modern era, though. I can't quite be sold on obviously painted backgrounds or fake plastic limbs (special shout out to those, they were hilarious). You can still appreciate the craft a lot with just doing it all on film, attempts at greenscreening that, while a bit poor, did make for more action to happen. The acting and other characters kind of didn't really need to be spectacular since the absurd and wild way the story played out was enough, but I can't not mention how grand the aunt's acting was. She did all kinds of small things to really sell it all. Kung Fu was absolutely my favourite. She fought a ghost with bare fists, kicked the cat with just her legs, and she stole the whole show just by doing that. The plot itself, I slightly wish had a little more to it? The teacher really could have had a lot more to do than just turn up, but neither was he the focus. Slightly wasted potential in my view. Overall, I don't feel like I would have changed much of it, though. It had ways to do some things a bit better, but it serves itself well, and it's probably other people's perfect movie, not mine.
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This review may contain spoilers
A special ancestor to many horror movies
A lovely forebear of Evil Dead 2, it's animated by the same love of cinema and shares it with the same immoderate joy.Another point in common is the use of arthouse-style editing effects with a half-horrific, half-humorous purpose and frenetic energy. And the latter creates some beautiful artistic moments amidst the chaos, such as the mirror scene and the piano assassination.
The then-young actresses have not enjoyed fantastic careers since, but I find them all convincing in what they were asked to do.
The older actress who plays the aunt is a pleasure to watch, having a ball as a very ham-handed villain.
The action scenes with Kung-Fu are surprisingly well done.
The film is dated, however, and whatever innovations it may have displayed on release, today some visual effects could look as if they'd been created with a bad free video editing app, and it's not always possible to overlook or sublimate them.
Fortunately, most of them are quite interesting, and add their share to an already rich and baroque editing style, set and props.
I don't have a strong opinion on the conclusion of the story, but it's a reasonable ending, yes.
The management of the music is perhaps one of the failures of this experimentation. On the one hand, I like the musical style's discrepancy with the film, but on the other, its constant use is both wearing and sometimes unsatisfactory. It's a flaw that could be applied to the film as a whole, which is highly lavish but just as messy.
A potential rewatchable winter classic as far as I'm concerned.
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