Pluskylang Great Film overall

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

sol- Also known as 'The Stranger from Afar', this Japanese horror film focuses on a freelance photographer who rescues a naked woman chained to a rock in a subway tunnel; he takes her home, only to discover that she is more animalistic than human with a taste for blood. The film is pretty much as weird as it sounds with little indication of just how much of what occurs is hallucination, imaginary or real. It remains a gripping ride though even when everything cannot be deciphered thanks to a truckload of atmosphere and a genuinely unsettling turn by Tomomi Miyashita as the mysterious woman. Some of the symbolism hits home quite well too with the protagonist viewing himself as a vampire, feeding off filming the misery and pain of others (sort of like Jake Gyllenhaal's character in 'Nightcrawler', but with a moral compass here). The film also taps into some curious territory early on as the protagonist announces a desire to find what caused a man to be so terrified that he committed suicide before his camera lens; some of his soliloquies in this early part of the film bring to mind 'Videodrome' as he equates cameras to the retinas of human eyes. One's mileage with 'Marebito' will no doubt vary depending on one's tolerance for the unexplained and deliberate ambiguity, but it is certainly refreshingly different from most other vampire movies out there.

missraze I did take this film very literally. I'm reading some other reviews and people have taken on a very abstract interpretation. That everything was symbolic. I hope this is their personal inference and not what the filmmaker has said in an interview paraphrased here because if so, the filmmaker might've been doing too much to legitimize a very unclear film.I took it as: the underworld beneath the subway station was in fact a hallucination or if not him going mad, then obviously he didn't physically travel and end up in this otherworldly netherworld. So I left that alone and saw it as, it's some kind of metaphor, he's not actually here. Here he meets a ghostly young girl. He takes her home, tries to get her to adapt to his world, and finds she only likes blood.OK well you know this film is very creepy. Of all the Japanese horror films I indulge myself in only the memory of this film and just typing about it made me look over my stupid shoulder. I know it's a horror film but that's why I don't like it. Because it's very potent in making you feel alone and it opens portals in your psyche that need not be opened, and fills them with things with which it need not be filled. Mainly because it's through the main character's disturbed eyes, particularly his camera. No idea why people say they hate the shaking camera as it's done in a documentary, homemade way intentionally.Well anyway overtime the guy is harassed by a woman. She tries to go in his house, and eventually she yells to take care of his daughter. The film shows he kills her. I took it literally. That he did in fact kill her. I never thought of him murdering her as a metaphor for him emotionally ruining her after abandoning her. But that he really is sick and killed her. And I thought this because he had this creature girl he called F. And the woman, the mother of his child who he "killed," asked him, "Where's Fuyumi! I know you have her! Stop hiding her!" So I saw it as, "Oh. The girl is actually his daughter and he is sick and tortures her...and the mother knows...and suddenly reality hits home so he again abandons his daughter, kills his wife, and wanders off.Apparently he emotionally killed his wife, not actually murdered her, and the girl isn't his daughter, just a representation of a part of his inner self that he doesn't understand. Hence why he found her in this abandoned fantasy of a location, that he basically said he was exploring out of bravery to discover the unknown. In this desolate "place," perhaps the representation of his inner self, he finds this starved half-dead thing in the form of a human female. Perhaps this female is the embodiment of his struggles. That plot twist or purpose ruins it because it makes it just mind-weaving and no thanks. I will never watch this again, it's really disturbing. Not because it's a bad film, just because it's disturbing which is its purpose. If I weren't disturbed and if it were more clear, I'd give it a higher rating.

masercot This movie seemed to derive itself from the works of Abe Kobo, a Japanese existentialist novelist who created vast unseen worlds. The underworld presented in this book was much like those of Abe. The main character has no charisma and evokes no sympathy; however, as a viewer, I couldn't wait to see the next thing that would happen to him. He is a man obsessed by video, video-taping his whole day, then reviewing the tapes until late into the evening.A suicide, which he films, starts him on his journey into the underworld. He comes back with a mute vampire, who he is compelled to feed, eventually through a couple of matter-of-fact and video-documented murders. The movie is low-budget: The underworld is spiral stairways and municipal tunnels opening to what looks like a mountain-scape. None of these venues look like sets, but have a more mundane feel. The acting and directing is solid. I was disappointed by the ending which, I must confess, I didn't "get"...

WisdomsHammer The main character, Masuoko, is looking for answers through the lens of a camera. He's obsessed with recapturing the terror he's seen on faces he's filmed, a feeling he says he's lost and can no longer experience.He wanders Tokyo with a camera attached to his face and becomes an observer so tightly connected to his lens that at times he appears to forget that people can see him. As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that he is becoming more and more disconnected from reality and humanity.He is guided by mysterious strangers to discover a beautiful but dangerous underworld where he finds a feral woman in captivity. He frees her and brings her to his home where he tries to nourish her to health—which is odd for a man who's been so apathetic up until now. His efforts are to no avail until he discovers she craves blood.Directed by Takashi Shimizu, who also directed Ju-on, this was no where near as captivating for me. It moved very, very slowly, which may have been an attempt to convey the main character's experience and quality of life.To me, this is almost like two separate films, akin to From Dusk Till Dawn, where the first half is sort of sick and violent and depressing, and the second half is a weird and eerie trip into a monster-movie.But this movie deliberately refuses to become exciting and remains subdued while interesting things are happening, which left me bored and wanting the movie to end already.I probably didn't "get" this movie, but even if I did, I can't say that the experience would have been much better. I did like the score, which conveyed more feeling than most of the performances did (on purpose).