Results tagged “Yusuke Kishi”

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First there was Black House (Japan), an adaptation of Yusuke(Crimson Labyrinth) Kishi’s novel. And now we have Black House (Korea), which is … also an adaptation of Yusuke Kishi’s novel. The Japanese version was mannered and strange with many obvious directorial intrusions, and I wavered between liking it for that reason and finding it simply annoying. The Korean version is constructed more like a conventional “Western” thriller, with obvious shock cuts and musical stings, but it’s that much more approachable, and I suspect most people will think of it as the “better” film. You choose.

Curious how intra-Asian remakes work. The last time this happened was The Ring, which was filmed multiple times in both Japan and Korea, and jumped the ocean to the United States to kick off the cinematic J-horror boom there. Said boom has mostly fizzled at this point — The Grudge and Dark Water were only okay, and if there was anything after that I’m probably lucky I don’t remember it. I doubt Black House is getting the remake treatment Stateside, but from what I see it would face faces fewer cultural hurdles than, say, Akira. (And of course there was Oldboy, a Korean adaptation of a Japanese comic with no American remake forthcoming after all, thank goodness.)

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Here is a movie which doesn’t really work as a whole, but is oddly fascinating if you take each piece by itself. The Black House was marketed as a thriller, but it’s really closer to one of Takashi Miike’s “thrillers”, where the workings of the plot take a backseat to outré examples of bizarre human behavior. I’m not sure I liked it, exactly, but I was never bored by it, and it earns a few extra points for being based on a novel by Yusuke Kishi (of The Crimson Labyrinth). The movie’s bizarre and striking enough to make you curious about the book, even if you’re not inspired to see the film itself more than once.

Most thrillers rarely have heroes — only victims or perpetrators. Wakatsuki, the protagonist of House, works in a small Kyoto life-insurance company but right from the start has VICTIM stamped on his forehead. He’s mousy, reticent, intimidated and twitchy. The only things in life that give him real peace are swimming and his girlfriend — when he’s in the water, and when he’s next to her, he’s a different man. He also knows his job well, and despite his meekness has a good nose for the fraud and double-dealing that are rampant. Things could be worse.