Page 199 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema
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186 Nightmare Japan
Marebito’s amalgamation of cyberpunk and gothic tropologies. Copious
scenes of industrial culture and technological mediation permeate
Shimizu’s film, as do explicitly sanguine images of vampirism and
Lovecraftian references to seductive yet monstrous (or seductive because
they are monstrous) dimensions abutting our own. Marebito’s dominant
mise-en-scène, then, repeatedly gothicises technology even as it exploits
technology’s mediation of the gothic. Stalking through a postindustrial
urban environment with his camera poised to capture images of fear,
Masuoka is a variation upon such gothic figures as the ‘mad scientist’ or
the ‘psychotic voyeur’. References to Victor Frankenstein, the horror
genre’s prototypical irresponsible father-figure, abound. Similarly, horror
film fans will likely notice the parallels between Shimizu’s obsessed
documentarian and the Mark Lewis character of Michael Powell’s
Peeping Tom (1960). What’s more, Shimizu filters many of the film’s
traditionally gothic moments through a myriad of technological
apparatuses, from the miniaturised screen of Masuoka’s cell phone to his
wall of high-definition computer monitors. By linking these high-tech
items with gothic horror, Shimizu echoes post-industrial anxieties
articulated in earlier Japanese horror films like Tsukamoto’s own Tetsuo:
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The Iron Man and Sono Shion’s Suicide Club.
Shimizu’s direction likewise foregrounds digital video as an
emerging medium through which directors and cinematographers may
graft new aesthetic criteria onto established genres, including horror.
Noticeably distinct from 35mm film stock in its current inability to
replicate the ‘graininess’ and variable focal lengths generally attributed to
celluloid’s visual ‘texture’, digital video nevertheless allows for vast
flexibility in terms of image rendering. Thus, the image clarity digital
video affords ranges from expressionistic colour and light saturation to
higher-definition, deep-focus photography. In addition, Shimizu carefully
staggers his digital video camera’s varying resolutions for dramatic
effect. In the process, he creates a documentary feel that heightens the
action’s immediacy while contributing to a meta-discourse on the politics
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Marebito similarly glosses: Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (1929),
Fukui Shozin’s 964 Pinnochio (1991) and Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960).