Nov 24

“Inerasable” – Film Review from the 20th JFF (Australia)

Film Comments Off on “Inerasable” – Film Review from the 20th JFF (Australia)

David Reilling lived in Nagano Prefecture, Japan for five years as an ALT. Although he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio in the United States, he is now living on the Central Coast of Australia. He loves traveling and could be anywhere next.

Even we’re confused about what’s going on.

‘The Inerasable’ or “Zan’e: Sunde wa ikenai heya” frightens the viewer and draws them into plot from the start.

The scene jumps to the present. The main character, played by Yuko Takeuchi, is an unnamed author of mystery-novels. Yuko’s character is currently attempting to write a horror novel with the help of her writers’ group. She receives a letter from a university student living in Tokyo, Futa, asking for her help. Futa believes a restless spirit haunts her apartment.

The best scenes of the movie happen in this early half of the movie. Futa sits down at her kitchen table in the evening to do homework and hears a sweeping noise behind her. She spins around and peers into her bedroom. She sees nothing and returns to her homework. The sweeping noise persists. The music stops. She tiptoes over to her bed, and looks underneath it. She finds nothing, yet the sweeping continues.

The scene was terrifying due to the plausibility: What would you do if you kept hearing the same strange noise in your apartment? I would probably call the Ghost Busters and Bill Murray.

These early scenes set a high standard. I expected to be jumping out of my IKEA couch for the rest of the movie. As Yuko Takeuchi’s character and Futa begin exchanging letters a deeper mystery begins to unravel. Other residents of the apartment building have been experiencing strange occurrences too.  The previous resident of Futa’s apartment number only lasted 6 months. The young father of a family moving next door approaches Futa. He pulls her aside and asks, “Did anything strange happen here? The rent is lower than this general area.” I immediately paused the movie and compared the rent of my apartment against data on realestate.com.au. I breathed a sigh of relief: it is 10% above the average rent cost.

The novelist and Futa look further into the history of the apartment building and its former occupants. Unfortunately, the plot descends into absurdity when attempting to link the current state of the apartment building to a long series of bizarre past tragedies. The previous occupant of Futa’s apartment hung himself in his new apartment after going mad from hearing the same sweeping noises. The noises appear be the brushing of a kimono along the floor after a woman hung herself and swayed from the rafters.

‘Inerasable’ leaves the horror genre and becomes a mystery. The apartment building sits on cursed ground. Before the apartments were built, a crazy old man who hoarded bags of trash inside his house, suffocated to death.

The main characters dig deeper into the histories of previous homeowners on the lot. Nearly 50 years earlier, a woman and her husband return home after attending their daughter’s wedding. The husband sits down to enjoy a cup of sake. Without a word, the woman hangs herself from the rafters, her kimono sash swishing along the floor. Has the source of the supernatural evil just been uncovered?

The plot becomes overly complicated at this point, deviating from the suspense of the first half. The two detectives pursue a bizarre chain of events so disturbing they become implausible and outrageous. As it turns out, a mother turned baby killer also lived on the land. Before her, another family imprisoned their mentally ill son in a cage. Somewhere in-between these two stories, a legend of a cursed portrait of a woman is told by a Buddhist monk. Is the picture the true source of the supernatural evil?

Not quite. In yet another turn of the plot, the picture originally came from a family in Kyushu, the Okuyama family. Of course something tragic happened to this family too. The husband was driven mad by voices, killed his entire family with a katana and then took his own life with the sword. Surely this is the last piece, right?

Wrong again. It turns out the crazy husband was the boss of a coal mine where over 100 miners died in an accident. The miners cursed the coal boss and agreed to haunt his house, pushing him into madness.

If the plot wasn’t bizarre enough, Yuko’s Takeuchi’s character suddenly appears wearing a neck brace for no reason connected to the plot.

The mystery ends because both Futa and the writer give up. Futa admits defeat: “The curse just keeps going. I’m at the point where I’m no longer sure what I’m looking for.” As a viewer, I was no longer sure what I was supposed to be looking for in this movie. ‘The Inerasable’ began as an excellent horror movie then devolved into a tangled and far-fetched mystery movie. I wanted the movie to stick with the simple and suspenseful formula from the first half.

On a final note, The latter half of the movie did have some interesting scenes showing jichinsai, a traditional Shinto ground-breaking ceremony. A temporary shrine is built and a Shinto priest in traditional garb blesses the ground before construction begins. The ceremony still occurs today.

The Inerasable (Zan’e: Sunde wa ikenai heya) by Yoshihiro Nakamura, released October 25 2015 in Japan, starring Takeuchi Yuko, Hashimoto Ai, Sasaki Kuranosuke, Sakaguchi Kentaro, Takito Kenichi.