A JAPANESE CHAINSAW MASSACRE? NOT REALLY. IKI JIKOGU (LIVING HELL)
IKI JIKOGU (LIVING HELL)
2000/Director: Shugo Fujii/Writer: Shugo Fugii
Cast: Hirohito Honda, Yoshiko Shiraishi, Rumi, Kazuo Yashiro, Naoko Mori, Shugo Fujii
If it has not become evident in the few posts I have made already I should clarify that love Japanese cinema. I am a really big fan of older Japanese cinema, from the late 50’s and early 60’s but am often luke warm when it comes to a lot of contemporary Japanese cinema (while some new stuff I have seen is simply fanatstic, such as Shohei Imamura’s The Eel) As a relevant side note I am currently living in Beijing China and therefore it is easy to find droves of Japanese, Korean and Hong Kong films here at a cheap price. So even if I buy a real dud I am not out any real money. A DVD here usually runs about a buck American. I did not completely hate this film written, directed by and starring (in a less than minor role) Shugo Fujii however I confess I was disappointed after it was all over. The DVD cover I have (it is not the one I have posted here in the review) is pretty misleading and often here in China DVD covers can have little to do with the movie contents. The reviews that are posted on the back are often negative and panning the film and the credits can be from a completely different film. For a while it seemed every other movie I bought had the credits for Spielberg’s Munich on it. And when the language of the film is something other than English you have no clue as to what you may be getting. There are some scenes on the cover here that never even appear in the movie. All those trifles aside some people on the net seem to enjoy the film and the complaints they have (i.e. the terrible score) are the same ones I have, but I may have a few more that prevent me from being able to recommend this movie.
I have now watched enough of this new Japanese horror stuff that I am getting the sense that I tend to like it less than I think I ought to. I feel like I should enjoy it more but I am consistently disappointed for the most part. This low budget (under $100,000 I understand) and quickly shot (nine days) psycho-thriller shows the limitations of its budget and schedule. It contains several Japanese horror clich’s (piles of worms and eyes peering through long strands of hair) that are repeated over and over until they become irritating actually.
The general story is about a 79 year old lady, Chiyo, and her granddaughter, Yuki, who kill a couple and their fluffy dog at the beginning of the movie. A woman even has her eye eaten out by some sort of carnivorous beetle. So it all seems to start off promising enough but the movie gets stuck real fast after the initial murder sequence. The story shifts to a year later and a family takes in the old lady and the girl who are distant relatives in need. In no time they begin to torment wheelchair bound Yasu in various and often inexplicable fashions to which he never tries to defend himself. Director Shugo plays Mitsu, a tabloid reporter, who gets involved to a dangerous degree while writing an investigative story on the murders from a year before and the recent escape from an asylum by Chiyo.
It turns out that Yuki and Yasu were actually once conjoined twins that were separated during their teenage years. It is not explained why since they seemed to have been only connected at the hip and such surgery normally takes place immediately after birth. However they were the products of a mad doctor’s experiments with the evil and perverted Chiyo so maybe that has something to do with it. Nothing much is really explained. Now, in many ways all of this has the ingredients for a great horror suspense movie, eyeball eating beetles, conjoined fraternal twins, people in wheelchairs being tortured, but it really goes no where and stays there forever. I cannot express enough how distracting and terrible the film score is. It is one of the worst I have heard in years. A good score is crucial to a horror movie.
Another odd thing is that the old lady is supposed to be really scary, but the truth is that she is just an old lady whose face never alters expression. She and Yuki spend all their time just staring. In Japanese films this is supposed to be really creepy, old ladies or little girls just staring at you, or showing no emotion as they torture you. But it goes on so long in some scenes in is simply absurd. The old lady kills people but she has no super powers or anything. They simply do not resist, because if they did they would whoop her butt. Yuki does the staring out through long black hair gimmick and nothing else. The expressionless faces are simply boring and never once freaky or terrifying. As it turns out Yasu¡’s entire family are totally insane and they have been hiding it from him all these years and his mother is actually Chiyo, the evil old lady.
The movie ends on a more preposterous note when it is revealed that all of the murders were all actually committed by the crippled Yasu himself and that Yuki is his dead sister he murdered during the surgery to separate them that he keeps alive in his mind to excuse his evil deeds, for example, the murder of the couple at the beginning. But the problem here is that we see Chiyo and Yuki kill the couple long before Yasu is introduced into the story. And he is wheelchair bound and how was he at the house of this couple who had no relation to him or his family? Even all the tortures are his own self-mutilations. But the other people in his family are insane and his brother, Ken, kills a couple people too. Why make the plot so unbelievable by making Yasu the real killer?
There are scenes where the actors show their insanity simply by giggling hysterically and ranting and crawling around on the floor. It is the type of acting that a non-actor would do if told to act insane. The annoying screaming that Yasu makes all of the time and the camera focusing on his open mouth as he does it is very annoying and it happens a lot.
I have read that this movie has been billed as the Japanese Texas Chainsaw Massacre (see the print on the cover graphic), but that is simply not the case at all. The violence here is not that intense or unnerving. There is a scene where all the family gathers together around a dinner table ala every Chainsaw movie made and acts weird and insane and cannibalism is inferred (and an eyeball eaten out of Shugo Fujii’s face), but the acting is bad and nothing is really shocking. The actors just act stupid and giggle and bounce around. The ending where Yasu winds up with a split personality is simply hurried and contrived. The only more ridiculous alternative would have been to have Yasu wake up screaming and find it has all been a dream, only to then have Chiyo and Yuki actually knock on the door at the end as the hokey synth-pad soundtrack goes into the end credits and the camera into his open mouth. So I guess it could have been worse. But as always, do not take my word for it, you may really enjoy it. I liked Brando’s Mutiny on the Bounty, so what do I know?A – Z LIST OF URANUM CAFE POSTS
