During his time as a film critic, Masato Harada became known for being tyrannically demanding of the productions he critiqued and was equally strict in respect to what he believed constituted a good film. Of course, this is understandable when one learns that the director studied under Howard Hawks. Thus, it should come as no surprise that, once behind the camera, Harada would be highly critical and particular of his own work. His demands upon aesthetics and his self-imposed obligation to maintain such levels of artistic integrity pays off as evidenced in the beautiful feature called Inugami.
Shortly after Akira Nutahara (Atsuro Watabe) arrives in the small rural community of Omine to assume his position as elementary school teacher, he meets and becomes infatuated with Miki Bonomiya (Yuki Amami), a meager papermaker who is old enough to be his mother. However, once a romance begins between the two, not only does Miki begin to appear younger, but strange deaths start occurring throughout the village.
From the opening scene, with its panoramic shots of the Japanese countryside as the soundtrack lightly serenades the viewer, Inugami makes it difficult to believe that what lies within could eventually becomes horrific. Despite its premise and the fact that everyone within Omine relays the previous evening’s nightmares to one another shortly after Miki and Akira meet, the tone of the feature remains extremely warm and amiable. Yet, with the aide of the audience’s good will, as well as the masterful patience of the director, Inugami becomes more than a horror film, it become a feature par excellence.
Unlike most of his horror cohorts, Harada not only takes the time to establish the groundwork for a meaningful tale of forbidden love, the consequences of blatantly dismissing tradition and value, atop casting a cautionary ecological fable, he does so with expertise disguised as cinematic extravagance. Early with the film we are witness to a brief, yet succinct, caption of a modern paper mill which runs counter to the excruciating labors of Miki’s outdated, yet nonetheless admirable, craft. It is this motif which serves as the springboard for the film as the director further develops one of his many themes by juxtaposing religion with secularism, taboo with tradition, and yesteryear with the advances of modern technology. Intriguingly, once the titular tension is created, it is sustained and further compounded by the threat of the forests surrounding Omine being clear-cut by the enterprising Doi family as the ominous myth of the Inugami continues to take form.
In a very unexpected Eastern telling of the Oedipus myth, Harada cleverly aligns the Western fable with that of Eastern folklore as Akira discovers that he has entered into a cursed family–not unlike the character of Oliver Reed in Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People, which Harada’s film shares more than one similarity to–in which the females of the Bonomiya clan are wardens of the Inugami, the vengeful spirit of the canine that faithfully protects its master. As keepers of the potentially homicidal spirit, one need not fret with being within the proximity of a Bonomiya woman unless one incites her rage. Unfortunately, such provocation need not come in the form of overt offense as we learn that mere circumstantial distress can beckon the menacing entity.
Predictably, given the agenda of a narrative, transgression occurs. However, instead of merely inserting an arbitrary crime against Miki, Harada fashions a meaningful impetus as the crux of the film’s conflict. Aside from the articulate editing by Soichi Ueno, this is perhaps the most impressive feat of the production as we sit enthralled at how the work will ultimately come to a close, a tale which–much like the taboo-breaking realities enclosed in Marquis de Sade’s short story, “Florville et Courval”–leaves its audience catatonically stunned at the moralistic weight of what’s been disclosed.
Yet, and perhaps due to Hawks’s teachings, Harada not only makes his film accessible atop being substantive, he succinctly posits a wry sense of humor to counterbalance the gravity of the situations at hand. From surreal, yet nonetheless comically absurd, dream sequences to ironical impromptu retorts (the consequence of the earnest character, not the director’s indiscretion), Inugami courses with life. From a coincidental Western perspective, the premise itself becomes blackly humorous for, by prompting the rage of a female guardian of a canine spirit god, she–as well as the specter–become “bitchy.”
In a subgenre fraught with overly capricious, convoluted plots, Masato Harada’s Inugami is a breath of fresh air for it not only presents a meaningful, heartfelt love story of horrifically tragic proportions, it does so with style and grace while . . . gasp . . . resolving each and every narrative strand by film’s end. Sadly, the director took the film’s meager earnings from his native box office to heart as he continues to seek critical validation by way of monetary signifiers despite the fact that a leitmotif concerning pride in the wake of money is expressed in the course of Inugami.
A thanks to Mr. Tokumaru Ogawa for his cultural experience and gracious patience, the latter of which I relentlessly tested while plummeting the former for this review.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
