The strangest episode of Sesame Street I’ve ever seen.
This Japanese horror film’s reputation as top shelf cinematic surrealism still might not be enough to prepare you for its hallucinatory, children’s-film-gone-psycho effect. It’s sweet and sinister at the same time. It plunges into childhood nostalgia and touches some very weird nerves. There’s nothing else like it.
Part of what makes it great is how it morphs into a horror film without resorting to easy shocks. Instead, it carefully builds an atmosphere where nothing feels right (I’d go so far as to say that this film isn’t even scary; it’s too beautiful for that). There’s something in the false backgrounds—the unreal skies, the painted trees, the animated scenes—that we don’t trust. The ghost house here is weird and otherworldly. The handmade special effects are outrageous works of art. The cast of schoolgirls are a little too happy for something horrible to NOT eventually happen to them. Then there’s the haunting piano melody theme music that’s repeated so often, sometimes in different tempos and arrangements, that it becomes hypnotic.
Add it all up for a film that should’ve been a 1970s midnight sensation. Instead, Japanese film juggernaut Toho Studios was almost embarrassed by it. Nobuhiko Obayashi, a director of television commercials with an interest in the avant-garde, making his first feature here, took on the film after all of Toho’s house directors turned it down. It became a minor hit with young people in Japan at the time, but it didn’t get out to the Western world at all until Janus Films discovered it and acquired it thirty years later. They put it out theatrically on the festival circuit and scored midnight screenings at some adventurous theaters, blowing minds along the way. A home video release from the Criterion Collection put the film on even more radars and a new cult sensation was born, just a little something found between the well-worn cushions of movie history. You’re not sure where it came from, but it’s mesmerizing.