of deceptively empty domestic spaces

What strikes me in "Chaos" is the use of space: how a supposedly safe / enclosed flat turns out, in several instances, to be treacherous.

First major shock. When the "kidnapper" returns to find whom he imagines to be his victim murdered, all of a sudden, this place, which was supposed to have been safe for their game, has been violated by another mysterious assailant who had access to it, and got in on the action. Or so it seems, as the story at this juncture suggests. (We will learn later that this is not what happened.) First betrayal of this apparently quiet and sacred space.

It is not so much a rebellion but a betrayal by the flat (its nature, as it were): as he goes on finding out what happened, the handy-man discovers whose flat is really is.

Then at the end, he phones the husband who discovers (SPOILER), in the bathroom, the corpse. And remember that this has to be a rather tiny appartment. New big spatial surprise.

You could also argue that the burial place itself -the ultimate logement- yields a twist-defining surprise.

Now. Isn't this somehow typical of the new breed of subtle psychological Japanese / Korean horror, examplified by ("Into The Mirror"), "The Grudge", ("A Tale Of Two Sisters") or "Dark Waters", where you have all these buildings turning against their inhabitants? These apparently empty, enclosed, spaces which are not what they seem, holding secrets / corrupted by Man's evil.

I am not going on about the classic Goth, isolated country mansion, "haunted house" trip. There is something else here, stylistically: more modern, streamlined, minimalist design.

I couldn't help wondering about it, especially if you bear in mind the housing conditions in Japan, or the density / repartition of its population (concentrated in a tiny proportion of the island). these teeming masses forced to cohabit in cramped since ultra-expensive houses (cf. the notorious Tokyo land- rates). What happens, then, when you can no longer find refuge and safety in your precious shelter which you assumed empty, private, restful...



I don't know, this is just a hunch... Anyone got any comment?

The fact that this primarily anodyne flat (nothing fancy about it, no darkness about it, no elaborate baroque architecture) is constantly redefined according to the protagonists' designs... Not least in the first place by the lovers, who made it their supposedly secret love-nest, only to get found out / surprised by the wife's intrusion, and where they re-create the married couple.

Watch "The Grudge" and you will also see a banal house, like there must be tens of thousands similar in Japanese cities. Cream-like colours, geometric cut, and so on. And yet... these walls record the horrors committed therein and won't let go of them.



If you want, I'm hinting at some kind of deceptive emptiness. I don't really recall sensing that in European movies. Is this a graphic objectification of "Zen in motion", where opposites meet and co-exist to impose a new logic? ...Just wondering...



"Ring" is different, obeys a well-established logic: the chain one has to escape.