I have not seen any of the various incarnations of Japanese director’s Takashi Shimizu ‘Ju On: The Grudge’ movies which of course limits my ability to levitate to him to the lofts of a cult icon on the level of Miike or Kurosawa (the creepy one). No sir, this would be the first film I’ve seen by this particular director, a film that is notable because it is said he shot this in 8 days on digital video in between ‘Grudge’ projects. I’m sure ‘The Grudge’ has given my man a sweet Tokyo penthouse suite and probably a nice beach front California villa, and despite the praise I keep hearing for this film ‘Marebito’ I’m afraid I can’t follow suit as this was one long, boring, drawn out, soulless genre defying film. But hey, that’s just my opinion.

Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamato) is a dour professional cameraman who has his apartment set to receive images from all over Tokyo it would seem. He video tapes everything searching for terror. His camera was running when he managed to catch a man, obviously terrified of something, wielding a knife. The man takes the knife and jams it into his eye and as such has extracted extreme envy from Masuoka who wants to experience that kind of terror. Masuoka takes his camera and travels to the under undergrounds of Tokyo which is a virtual catacomb, attempting to find out what this man saw that gave him such glorious terror. In this catacomb he meets the guy who stabbed his eye out, even though dude is dead, but maybe not. He explains some stuff, but then again maybe he doesn’t. Going even further to what seems to be the center of the earth Masuoka finds a naked waif chained to a rock with razor sharp yellow teeth. What do you do when you find a naked Japanese chick with razor sharp yellow teeth? Why you take her home of course and make her a pet.

Things get complicated when Masuoka discovers this thing he’s taken home, giving her the name of F (Tomomi Miyashita), can only survive off of blood, preferably human. To further complicate things somebody is spying on Masuoka, breaking into his apartment and wrecking his crib, and it looks like it’s that dead guy from the subway. Masuoka has also taken to murder in order to feed F. This all culminates in, well, confusion and nothingness in what I’m going to assume that Shimuzu’s eight days had pretty much run out and it was time to wrap this garbage up and make some real money shooting another 'Grudge' movie.

Sometimes a genre defying film is a good thing. The filmmakers are creating a work of such over reaching achievement that trying to classify it would be doing the film a severe disservice. Then there’s ‘Marebito’ which would have done well for itself to find a genre. Is it horror? Well if horror consists of blood and gore then no, it’s not. If horror consists of being scared and shocked then no, it is not. Is it terror? Well I was never close to feeling terrified, only mystified during my viewing of 'Marebito'. I don’t think there was any mystery to ‘Marebito’, though one may have been curious as to where F came from and who she is, but chances are she’s a figment of Masuoko’s imagination anyway, or not, so it doesn’t really matter. It certainly wasn’t funny or dramatic. If anything ‘Marebito’ has created its own genre with ‘Weirdly Experimental’.

Here’s what ‘Marebito’ actually is, and that would be a crappy, lackluster film lacking any entertainment value. It is fairly obvious to me that Shimuzu had a few days to waste before heading on to the USA to cash in on yet another ‘Grudge’ movie, found an uncomplicated script, called up few friends, and decided to test out his Panasonic DVX-100 and make a movie in 8 days to see if it could be done. Now this is probably the best 8 day movie ever, but this still doesn’t make it any damn good. What he probably wasn’t banking on were his legions of fans watching this garbage and hitting him over the head with ‘Genius’ quotes and deep discussions of ‘meanings’ and ‘examinations’, though I’m sure he’ll take it. I know I would.

Sitting next to me right now I have a copy of ‘Rinne’ also crafted by Shimuzu. I’m going to pretend I haven’t seen ‘Marebito’ and allow ‘Rinne’, which I’m sure he had more than 8 days to direct, be my introduction to this filmmaker. One day, I’ll get around to seeing a ‘Grudge’ movie. One day.