THE INVASIAN: Over Your Dead Body (2014)

Takashi Miike is one easily one of my favorite directors of all time. Like the late, great Jess Franco, he is wildly prolific and has a unique style all his own. When I saw that Shout! Factory was releasing another one of his titles, I couldn’t have been more excited. While I don’t love everything he does, I always get to see something masterfully directed or at the very least, wildly bizarre, when I check in on this weird dude’s work.

Here’s the bare minimum of the plot because I don’t want to risk spoiling anything. While rehearsals for a lavish production of the famous Japanese ghost story, Yotsuya Kaidan*, are under way, lead actress Miyuki (Ko Shibasaki) suspects that her boyfriend and fellow actor Kosuke (Ebizô Ichikawa), is having an affair with a younger actress. As the storyline of the play grows darker, so does Miyuki’s obsession with keeping Kosuke by any means necessary.

Miike could easily pull off a film version of Yotsuya Kaidan and judging by his work directing theatre productions I’ve read about, he could just as easily do a stage production. In Over Your Dead Body, he kind of does both. He uses the framework of the old ghost story to blend his main characters’ descents into madness and nightmares with very pleasing results. The grotesque and over-the-top setpieces -with a dash of body horror thrown in for good measure- will make fans of horror manga very happy.

Screenwriter Kikumi Yamagishi also worked on Miike’s classic horror musical comedy hybrid, The Happiness of the Katakuris, and Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. He’s a talented guy for sure but something is missing from Over Your Dead Body and I don’t know if it’s his writing, Miike’s direction, or Kenji Yamashita’s editing.

My biggest criticism of Over Your Dead Body is also a high compliment from me; I wish the film had been longer. Had there been just a bit more attention paid to the characterization of the actors in the play, this would be a stone cold classic. Their motivations and personalities are just too simple for me.

The dark beauty of the horror elements and the lavish spectacle of the play within the movie would mean even more if Miyuki, Kosuke, and the rest weren’t so thinly written. That being said, the film is loaded with enough style, scares, and Miike’s own brand of weirdness to make it worth your time. Recommended. 

*A great deal of the plot points of Yotsuya Kaidan is covered in Over Your Dead Body. I recommend the Wiki page to see what it’s all about or check out Nobuo Nakagawa's 1959 adaptation if you can find it.

Just thinking about Takashi Miike

Man, I love me some Takashi Miike.

Here are some of my reviews of his movies:

Sabu

The Bird People in China

Shinjuku Triad Society

Rainy Dog

Ley Lines

Detective Story

Wow, some of these are crazy old!

I should probably review the rest (there's only like 90+ of them!) sometime.

Detective Story

Detective Story
AKA Tantei Monogatari
Directed by Takashi Miike
Released: 2007
Starring Kazuya Nakayama, Kurodo Maki, Asae Oonishi, Kentaro Nakakura
Running Time: 99 minutes
Country of Origin: Japan

Detective Raita Kazama (played by Kazuya Nakayama) is neighbors with salaryman Raita Takashima (Kurodo Maki). These two dudes may share a first name but they couldn’t be more different. Takashima is a boring pushover who doesn’t know how to say no. He gets dragged along on Kazama’s wild journey to solve a series of gruesome murders that someone is trying to frame him for. On the other hand, Kazama is completely bonkers. His detection methods are completely unorthodox and yet he always seems to come out on top. However, Kazama’s luck seems to be running out on this case when a woman who comes to him for help winds up as another one of the killer’s eviscerated victims.



I freely admit that I don’t always understand Takashi Miike. I’ve been a fan of his since I first watched both Audition and Visitor Q several years ago. He did turn me off to his films with the potentially amazing but ultimately repetitive and dismal, Izo. Of course, after a little break, I was ready to see what the guy has been up to. Not too surprising, the dangerously prolific Miike has directed over a dozen films since then. One of those films is Detective Story, a gory, hilarious, and eccentric slap in the face to any doubters of the director’s greatness.



This shot on video horror flick is no cheap throwaway. Detective Story is freaky, nasty, fun, and wildly original. The main characters are totally outrageous and over-the-top and the actors are all up to the challenge. Nakayama (who had the unfortunate task of playing the title role in Izo) is fifteen different varieties of awesome in this film. His portrayal of the odd, brutish, and yet somehow loveable Raita Kazama is probably the best thing about this film. Kurodo Maki plays the other Raita, the sheepish, perverted, and perpetual stick in the mud, with gusto. It feels good to watch him suffer. My favorite, of course, is Kazama’s secretary, Mika, who is played by the lovely Asae Oonishi. Mika somehow manages to be even more deranged than her employer.



So if you’re like me and you loved Miike’s MPD Psycho but you were left wanting more, then you will definitely get a kick out of Detective Story. He delivers the weirdness, the jazzy soundtrack, the disgusting gore (when it’s not curiously pixilated), and the crazy characters. And it’s all mixed together in a strangely delicious blend of splatter, film noir, and comedy. Check this out, y’all.

Guest Blog! Top 5 Asian Horror!

Good morning, everybody. Today, Aaron of The Death Rattle and The Gentlemen's Blog to Midnite Cinema is here with his top 5 favorite Asian horror films. Aaron is a rad and bad dude. I strongly suggest that you think about him the next time you're at the ATM withdrawing some cash!



#5 AUDITION (1999; Japan; directed by Takashi Miike)

In Takashi Miike's AUDITION, a single father, Shigeharu Aoyama, has a friend of his who produces films set up a mock audition which, unbeknownst to the actresses who are trying out for a role that doesn't exist, will allow Shigeharu to scope out a potential wife. Through the audition, he meets a reserved young woman named Asami Yamazaki, and the two develop somewhat of a romantic relationship. It's eventually revealed, however, that Asami isn't exactly who she seems to be, and Shigeharu learns this the hard way.

AUDITION is a strange film in that it's basically a quirky love story that turns into a horrific WTF-fest about two-thirds of the way in. Sure, it takes a really long time to get to the "good parts" (which is why it barely made my list), but the good parts alone make this one of my favorite Asian horror movies. It also holds a special place in my heart as being the first ever Takashi Miike movie that I've ever seen, and it was also my gateway film to the wonderful but mostly frustrating world of Asian horror.



#4 HAUSU (1977; Japan; directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi)

A teenage girl invites her friends along to her estranged aunt's house for the summer. But when they arrive and gradually notice a series of strange events occurring, they learn that wheelchair-bound aunt is in fact a demon who eats little girls and the home that they're staying in is possessed. HAUSU is an absolutely bonkers horror-comedy with elements of experimental film-making. It's also directed by the same guy who did the Charles Bronson "Mandom" commercials, and the unusual, glossy style of those commercials definitely carries over into the film. People (myself included) often throw around the phrase "you'll never see anything like it" when describing films, and trust me when I say that you will never EVER see anything like HAUSU. From beginning to end, it's an unrelenting display of one bizarre scene after another. HAUSU has recently been given the Criterion treatment, and I strongly urge everyone to check it out once it's available.



#3 SUICIDE CLUB (2002; Japan; directed by Sion Sono)

In SUICIDE CLUB, Japan is plagued by a series of unexplained mass suicides. As police investigate and eventually team up with a computer hacker who may hold clues as to the reasoning behind the mass suicides, a number of bizarre revelations are made as far as how the suicides are connected and are seemingly contagious. A number of phone calls to a detective by an unknown male who repeatedly clears his throat before speaking; an all-girl bubblegum pop band; a cryptic website that features red and white dots instead of text; a stitched-together roll of human skin - all of these things may or may not be connected to the suicides, and that's really all I can say without spoiling anything for anyone who has yet to see this gruesome, fascinating, and just plain WEIRD film. I wouldn't go so far as to call this movie "disturbing", but it's one that definitely sticks with you once you watch it, mainly because of how strange it is.



#2 ONIBABA (1964; Japan; directed by Kaneto Shindo)

A mother and her daughter-in-law support themselves by killing lost samurai and selling their armor and weapons. Eventually, a man, who claims to be a fellow soldier along with the mother's son (and daughter-in-law's husband, obviously), comes into the picture and reveals that he has been killed in the war. The man slithers his way into their home and begins to have an affair with the supposedly widowed daughter-in-law. What ensues is a very twisted and sexual film that reeks of irony and takes somewhat of a supernatural turn towards the end of the film when the central characters, specifically the mother, are visited one night by a mysterious samurai who wears a demon mask.

You'll be very hard pressed to find an Asian horror movie as visually stunning as this expressionist-style film. Even by 1960's standards, it still manages to blow a lot of horror movies made today out of the water without the benefit of special effects. Relying purely on its haunting atmosphere, amazing cinematography, and incredible score consisting mostly of Taiko drums, ONIBABA, in my opinion, is a masterpiece and undoubtedly one of my favorite Asian horror films. It's not a very accessible movie that will appeal to everyone, but those who can appreciate its style will most likely fall in love with it just as I did.



#1 A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (2003; South Korea; directed by Ji-Woon Kim)

Remade in America as THE UNINVITED (which actually wasn't that bad!), this South Korean psychological horror movie is about two sisters who are trying to adapt to living with their cruel step-mother, as well as get over the loss of their birth mother. One of the sisters has recently been seeing a psychiatrist and is taken out of that situation by her father due to some progress being made, as far as how her sessions have been going and whatnot. As the movie progresses, a series of shocking revelations are made in regards to the family, and quite possibly one of the greatest plot twists in the history of horror cinema is executed.

If you're reading this, chances are you've either seen A TALE OF TWO SISTERS or its American remake, and even if you haven't seen either, I'm sure at least one of your shit-head friends has spoiled the ending of the remake for you. But, if you haven't seen either film and are completely blind to what happens in both (they both feature the same twist), I can't recommend this movie highly enough. For the most part, South Korea never ceases to amaze me with the quality of their films, and, for what it's worth, this movie easily ranks as one of my top South Korean genre films PERIOD. A TALE OF TWO SISTERS is legitimately creepy at times, and I can count on one hand the amount of films to come out in the last decade that I can say that about. This is hands down my favorite Asian horror movie of all time