Page 198 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

New Terrors, Emerging Trends 185

seeks can only be discovered ‘underground’, Masuoka soon finds himself
wandering through a subterranean labyrinth of darkened tunnels. In this
nether world, he encounters a terrified man muttering warnings about the
existence of flying Demonic Robots (or ‘Deros’), and the spirit of the
man whose suicide Masuoka recorded. This latter figure serves as a
temporary Virgil for Masuoka’s Dante-like excursion. Finally emerging
in an impossibly expansive cave containing ‘The Mountains of Madness’,
a direct reference to the monstrous mythology created by the early
twentieth century US horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft, Masuoka discovers a
beautiful but bruised young female chained to a rock. He brings the
woman back to his apartment, where he studies her carefully and
concludes that she is not human. He names her ‘F’, and soon the denizens
of the subterranean realm from which she was taken hunt Masuoka down
and demand her immediate return. However, Masuoka’s understanding
that ‘F’ requires a steady diet of blood to survive, coupled with his
willingness to procure this ‘food’ for her on a regular basis, convince the
underground entities of his ability to properly care for ‘F’. Masuoka
eventually tries to acclimate ‘F’ to life in human society, but when his
attempts prove unsuccessful, he elects to sacrifice his life for hers. Slicing
his mouth open with a razor, he allows her to feed on the blood pulsing
from his lacerated flesh and then accompanies her back to the rhizomic
subterranean tunnels from which she came, and where, as Masuoka
remarks, he has ‘no need for human words.’ The film ends with the same
image with which it began: Masuoka’s terrified eyes as captured by his
digital video camera. Now, however, the camera is in ‘F’’s hands.
Shimizu holds on the image of Masuoka’s horrified gaze, cutting out the
film’s soundtrack for several beats before the final credits roll. This
strategy is very powerful, leaving the viewer to contemplate the meaning
in Masuoka’s eyes without the benefit of the traditional, frequently non-
diegetic aural cues that have become a staple of the horror genre.
Tsukamoto Shinya’s performance in Marebito capitalises upon
his iconographic stature as an avant-garde director concerned with the
various interpenetrations of the biological and the technological.
Specifically, it links Shimizu’s oeuvre with Tsukamoto’s. The result is a
fusion of aesthetic and critical perspectives perhaps best realised through