but it scares the hell out of me. I don't think I've seen a horror movie that captures the bleakness of life like this one. I mean, sure, movies like Cries and Whispers or something like that deal in this area all the time, but a ghost movie? The story isn't exactly crystal clear, but if this movie proves anything it's that the story doesn't have to be. 9/10.
What's the Spanish for drunken bum?
"I don't think I've seen a horror movie that captures the bleakness of life like this one."
I agree, this movie perfectly translates that feeling of loneliness and apocalyptic despair.
Another thing I like about the movie is that nature of what exactly is happening is so obscured, that not even the characters in the movie have a clue (except for that one guy, Theory Guy, and the chances are that even he is doomed in the end).
The word "overrated" is overrated.
Theory Guy's theory was only partial. He figured out how the ghosts were getting into our world, but he didn't understand why they were doing it. He even sent that one guy (names always escape me in J-Horror) to chase one, just for kicks. If he had known what would have happened if he caught it...
He probably got caught by that very ghost himself.
I'm pretty much a shut in myself. I've never thought of being alone as something terrifying until I saw this movie. The idea that death is "the right now, forever" is both horrifying and depressing at the same time. It's hard to be scared and depressed at once.
And THAT is where babies come from.
"It's hard to be scared and depressed at once."
Yeah, Kairo is one of those few movies that can do that. Pretty impressive.
The word "overrated" is overrated.
I interpreted this 'ghost' figure to be a person who had 'seen' a ghost via the internet. As in, one who was still alive but psychologically already lost - or symbolic of those individuals in society who are only comfortable seeking superficial interaction mediated through technology but who are like ghosts and who feel lonely and have failed to make meaningful connections with other people.
The description of 'theory guy' in this scene is really interesting. If you try to get close then they will retreat or he said something about speaking with them being an impossibility. It's a description of someone like this. While they crave and need connection and interaction, their instincts tends to be to clam up, be nervous and to flee uncomfortable social interactions. So they are like ghosts who can't be 'caught'. I think the movie suggests that the more we use technology for interaction, the less comfortable and easy meaningful and direct interaction can become.
There's another scene like this later on when one of the characters sees a worker hiding in the back of a pharmacy or some place like that.
It's certainly the quietest depiction of apocalypse I've ever seen. Everyone discreetly commits suicide or simply dissolves into nothing from unbearable sadness. No cataclysmic earthquakes or mass explosions here. Just overwhelming silence and emptiness. I love that.
As seems to be the case with all of this Kurosawa's films, the running time could use some serious trimming, and some of the dialogue would be unforgivably cheesy were it in English. Regardless, the movie plumbs such boundless depths of debilitating despair, urban alienation, and spiritual desolation that any flaws ultimately become irrelevant. It's a singularly haunting, profoundly unsettling experience, and possibly the most distinctive ghost story of all time. 8.5/10.
I also saw the themes of depression and societal alienation in this movie. Not only the potential loneliness of life, but the resultant loneliness of death. The "stains" left behind by some of the people are reminiscent of kodokushi (literally "lonely death"), which is when someone has died and lain undiscovered for so long, there is a permanent stain where their body was. In essence, the only proof they ever existed at all.
shareI was wondering if those stains were an allusion to the infamous nuclear shadows from Hiroshima blasted into the cement from the living bodies of people exposed to the blast. But then that one shadow broke apart into confetti like stuff. Wasnt sure what that was about.
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Using words to describe art is like using a screw driver to cut roast beef.
Regarding the story's clarity, my interpretation is that the basis of the story is not complicated: There is a spirit plane occupied by spirits consumed by eternal emptiness and loneliness. They find access to the plane of the living via electronics, some kind of accidental doorway.
Desperate for help to ease their torment, some of the spirits reach out to the living that they come across. Touching the living plants the seed of loneliness in the living, which then inevitably grows and consumes the living, like an infectious disease. The interaction does not help the spirits, therefore, their intentions are not malevolent even though the consequences result in end of days of the living, a sort of eternal damnation.
That electronics is the vector of "infection" provides a metaphor for the film maker to show us that he thinks that social media is isolating, having the opposite psychological and emotional effect on its users than what they had intended when they got on-line. The lonely spirits are not the malignancy, rather, using electronic media as a surrogate for human experience is the source of human alienation and self destruction.
Also interesting in the film is that the four main characters represent different emotional responses to calamity. The Computer lab girl wants to study the phenomenon rationally, one greenhouse girl wants to simply "act normal" and deny the issues, Our male lead wants to combat death by living the life for as long a possible, he doesn't want to waste his life pondering death and our lead female grieves for the world but retains her humanity.
It's quite interesting though I didn't find it scary.
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