Hi there! I’m Jason. I’ve written a few film reviews in the past, but never before has a movie left me with so much to think about that it would take a whole goddamn essay to make sense of it. First things first: I really love movies. I tend to appreciate a reasonably wide range of genres and often find myself enjoying truly hilarious bad flicks (Riki-oh, Troll 2, Violent Shit 3) every bit as much as the work of legitimate artists (Scorsese, Tarantino, Kubrick). Make no mistake, however; I am not suggesting that Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu falls into the “so-bad-it’s-good” category, despite containing in abundance all the necessary archetypal ingredients. Quite the contrary, actually: Hausu is probably one of the finest pieces of cinema I have ever had the pleasure of viewing, and it is certainly the most entrancing. I hope you’ll forgive the fact that this really is more an essay about why I love Hausu than a critical review, but I feel there simply hasn’t been enough written about this movie, and some of what has been written (I’m looking at you, Wikipedia) doesn’t really say anything at all.
Produced somewhat unbelievably in 1977, Hausu is most often referred to as a horror-comedy, but any such attempt to encapsulate the film’s spirit, by distilling it through the optics of genre, will be woefully inadequate. Hausu is also widely considered a cult classic, and while I suppose it technically is one, I also find this classification overly reductive and, to be honest, kind of insulting. Suffice it to say that this film will disappoint neither genuine fans of blood and gore (and [exclusively female!] nudity), nor audiences who find only ironic value in excessive camp and brutality; but to enjoy Hausu on either of these levels alone – or hell, even both of them – would be to depreciate its real worth. Above all else, Hausu demonstrates what film as a medium is really capable of in the hands of a truly creative individual. Strange though it may sound, this aspect of Hausu reminds me most of Citizen Kane: at the heart of both works, what really makes them special, is directorial vision, the kind of exuberant innovation that could only have been brought to fruition by both a genuine love of film and exceptional talent.
Obayashi employs a staggering array of visual techniques to create a product well ahead of its time and well outside the bounds of convention, combining live action, cartoon and rotoscope as well as utilizing various color filter, lighting and angle tricks, shifting the aspect ratio, and dressing his sets with obviously fake fairy-tale backdrops, to mention just a few. The editing is at times peaceful, as one scene slowly fades into the next, and at times maddening, with rapid-fire cuts and action sequences that you’ll miss entirely if you happen to blink at the wrong moment. An eerie and generally unsettling soundtrack accompanies the visuals, complete with a haunting evil song that plays repeatedly, and special theme music for the kung-fu character’s fight scenes. As with the visual editing, at times the audio is quiet and foreboding – a simple piano melody (which, by the way, I still find myself whistling days later), the chirping of cicadas, or just plain old ominous silence – only to reach a cacophonous crescendo shortly thereafter, with songs playing on top of other songs and characters talking all at once as additional sound effects and distortion make it impossible to decipher any of it anyway. The result of this extensive attention Obayashi clearly gave the auditory and visual components of his movie is a highly sensory experience that is at once immersive and disorienting.
The sporadically turbulent pacing in Hausu – from tense, thoughtful buildups to quick and frenzied action, and then back again – certainly does its part to keep the viewer engaged, but Obayashi is hardly the only director to have realized this. What elevates his use of this technique beyond the dime-a-dozen jump scares in today’s slashers and torture porn is the effect the dichotomy has on the film as a whole, contributing to parallel shifts in its tone and feel. Here I finally return to the topic of genre, and I feel it must be said again that conventional genre categories on their own are insufficient tools with which to classify Hausu and will invariably lead to an impoverished understanding of the film. Hausu’s customary horror-comedy label is mostly accurate from a narrative standpoint, I suppose, but comes up short in two major ways: first, it fails to cover the entire spectrum of genres the film comprises, extending well beyond the realm of horror-comedy (which, it is only fair to mention, is a substantial category in its own right); and second, it fails to recognize that Hausu is not a film that itself fits into any specific genres at all, but rather a wide (and at times, seemingly discordant) assortment of genre archetypes find themselves being expressed through various aspects of Hausu, including but not at all limited to its narrative structure. It is, however, precisely this incongruity of genre that imparts the film its uniquely disturbing character.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
Before I start discussing genre incongruity, though, I should probably go over the basics of the plot. Hausu is (rather poignantly, I think) a simple tale, at least in terms of the actual progression of events. There’s the protagonist, Oshare, who upon learning that her father’s new love interest plans to intrude on their annual vacation decides to go visit her aunt instead. Meanwhile, her bff Fanta (who is prone to fits of fantasy) plans on going to summer camp with the rest of their archetypal friends (Kung-Fu the strong one, Gari [slang for bookworm] the bookworm, Melody the musician, Sweet the sweet one, and Mac the fatty [by Japanese standards, anyway (she’s not fat)]). Their summer plans are also scrapped for one reason or another, conveniently freeing them all up to accompany Oshare to Hausu. And so off they go, where after an encounter with the Melon Man that can only be described as “rapey,” they meet, greet and one-by-one are seduced and devoured by Oshare’s creepy aunt-house.
While Hausu’s unsettlingly lighthearted stock protagonists and some of its opening scenes seem to provide a setup more appropriate for a teen romance anime than a Christie-esque slasher flick, and the brightly painted storybook backgrounds seem to recall (and in many ways, surpass) the fantastic Fred Savage-imagined world of The Princess Bride, it is nevertheless impossible to ignore the horror abounding in Hausu. Obayashi’s film has its share of absurd and inventive death scenes, to be sure, but far more significant are both the feeling of genuine unease that steadily builds as the action nears the titular house, and the relentless malevolence that then assails whoever enters. This consistent air of dread, often sought after by horror directors but rarely achieved, is partially accomplished through the soundtrack and visuals (which I really can’t praise enough), but a large part of it is due to the characters, particularly the two that are given any depth, Oshare and – sort of – her Auntie.
Oshare, whose name means well-dressed or fashionable, is the prettiest member of her clique; thus, she is naturally the leader. Oshare is also notably the only schoolgirl who transcends the one-dimensionality of her friends and develops as a character. A girl who lives up to her name, she spends much of the movie dressing up, bathing and looking at her own reflection. Somewhat immature, she reacts with understandable but nonetheless disconcerting anger to the news that her father plans to remarry, declaring that she hates and wants to hurt him. Her eventual transformation from a vain, somewhat arrogant youth into a much more imposing figure again recalls Citizen Kane on some level, although there are significant differences. Kane attempts to force his talentless second wife into an opera career she has no interest in, likely out of a desire to create around himself an aura of refinement, an endeavor at which he fails miserably. From the final scene of Hausu, however, it is clear that Oshare has reached the apotheosis of refinement in her newfound maturity. As she welcomes her stepmother to the house, she is now graceful, mysterious and beautiful; indeed, she has become a superior woman, having merged with the entity of the house itself – a house does, after all, evoke a certain womb imagery. The symbolism in Oshare’s returning, in particular, to the house of her mother in order to reach adulthood deepens the metaphor even further.
And it is really not, as I stated before, Oshare’s aunt who is the film’s second significant character; rather, it is Hausu, the house itself – but then, the house is the Aunt, and the cat, and the song, and eventually the house is Oshare too. It turns out Hausu is a supernatural entity – and cross-dimensionally aware, as evidenced by Auntie’s knowing smirk to the camera – that consumes virgin girls, born from the regret or despair or something of Oshare’s dead (in a manner of speaking) grandmother, whose husband was shot down in WWII. It is unclear how this transformation first occurred, but we are led to believe it was gradual, much like Oshare’s transformation in the movie. At one point her Aunt mentions that in her loneliness, she began speaking to inanimate objects, perhaps suggesting that the emotion she could not share with any living people, being continuously poured into the house, caused Hausu to take on a life of its own. At any rate, the house is quite alive, and all who enter it soon become quite dead – although as Oshare reassures us in a delightfully menacing close-up, everything will eventually awaken, if it is hungry.
So what does all of this amount to? Obayashi’s film is immeasurably rich, and I’m sure an in depth shot-by-shot analysis would be fascinating, if not the longest analysis ever of a movie under 90 minutes. But in the end, above all the other themes and genre theory and cinematic experimentation, Hausu is about beauty and evil. It is elegant terror, sublimity amidst insanity. Perhaps Fanta sums it up best, right after their first friend goes missing and right before the true madness begins: while searching for Mac, she looks up at the eerie storybook sunset and, for a moment, forgets her mounting fear, exclaiming “How beautiful!” That is Hausu. I sincerely feel that everyone with even a passing interest in cinema must see this movie. It says so much about film, and says it so well, that go through life not having seen it would be tragic.
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