Jigoku

I picked this one up on a lark and I was pretty underwhelmed. The opening is both stylish and genuinely creepy with its laments, wrapped corpses, and surreal hellscapes, and it segués cleverly into a college lecture hall where our protagonist, a young theology student it seems, is listening to a lecture on concepts of hell. It's by no means fair to say that it's all down hill from there, but the movie only intermittently reaches the same heights. There are deeply unsettling and scary moments, but they're balanced by lot of ho hum bits and few others that almost set one to giggling. The plot is a complete mess it pulls credulity to bits and keeps on ripping and its all so rushed that there's neither time to build any real suspense or develop the characters. This is another problem: The female lead is a stereotypical picture of what I take to be a traditional Japanese idea of womanly virtue and the protagonist is just kind of wishy washy and uninteresting. His demonic friend and tormentor Tamura steals every scene he's in; the actor was clearly having a blast chewing up the scenery. And he succeeds wonderfully in what (I presume) he's supposed to do, which is making evil look a lot more fun than our hero's imperfect handwringing sort of virtue. But of course all the plot and real world stuff is just to set up hell right? Well the hell doesn't redeem it. It's often beautiful in a sick sort of way (Brueghel has a run for his money here) and viscerally repulsive, but while it might shock and perhaps even awe the viewer at points it's more gory and repulsive than unsettling. I suppose my reaction might be culturally conditioned, perhaps it would get under the skin of a Buddhist much more than it did a (somewhat lapsed) Christian like myself, but this brings me to another point: The theology is harsh as well you know. Almost everyone's evil and even the people who've committed fairly understandable and, I'd think, forgivable sins end up in hell. I grew up in an avowedly evangelical church and their theology was much more forgiving and understanding of human weakness. Sometimes we seem to have landed in the world of those terror tracts some churches in my home town used to pass out; there's a definite air of grim disapproval (whether affected or genuine I can't tell) for the sinful modern world hanging over the thing that's so stodgy it's more than a little funny. I'll give it high marks for the visual style and for the cool jazz that floats through and most of the actors acquit themselves quite well (though some don't have too much to work with). But to say that makes a complete mess of plot, pacing, and characterization is, if anything, kind.

I read about this movie when I was a kid. Never thought that much about it since I would probably never see it. Recently rented it off Netflix and WOW! Nakagawa's message comes through loud and clear across 46 years and the even wider cultural gap between US and Japan. Unusual stylization (truly hope to see this on a theater screen someday) is incredibly effective as a purely aesthetic experience (meaning you could turn off the subtitles and still be enthralled by the visuals and the music) AND as an elegy for the Japanese traditions of beauty and honor. You can read the various summaries in other posts. Suffice it to say this movie qualifies as a masterpiece if you don't go into it with "horror movie" expectations. See it!

Certainly not a film for everyone, 'Jigoku' combines visions of Dante, surreal art, nightmarish tortures, and of course, Japanese camp. Director Nobuo Nakagawa presents it all in a dark, dreamlike way, shocking us (mildly) with the death of characters in the first part of the movie, and ramping this up to really shocking us with his vision of the torments of hell. It's in these that the film is at its best. There are the scenes of gore which may have you cringing, but the truly memorable scenes are those which are artistic, such as the field of hands reaching up out of the ground, and the whirling torment of people circling in a frenzy. In Nakagawa's hell, there is both physical pain and mental anguish, as people endlessly seek loved ones or slog through rivers of pus and waste. Where the film is weaker is in providing reasons for why all of the characters end up in hell in the first place. While the initial setup of a hit and run accident is pretty tight, expanding this to a broader set of characters gets a little contrived. Through it all, the character of the dark and sociopathic friend is played well by Yôichi Numata, who stands out in the cast.

The kind of film that sounds really exciting, and is interesting, but you wish it were a bit better than it is. Its reputation is based mostly on the final 40 minutes, where all the characters take a vacation to the bowels of Buddhist Hell (pretty much like Christian Hell, but with more lotus flowers). The first hour or so isn't much less hellish. A college student and his wicked friend mow down a drunk gangster in their car. The student, burdened with guilt (somewhat nonsensical guilt seeing as it wasn't his fault), starts seeing tragedy occur all around him. In just the next several days, all kinds of people with whom he associates die. It's never his fault, per se, but for some reason he always blames himself. That first hour is a little boring and a little confusing – I was wondering if the guy was supposed to already be in hell. The hell part is pretty cool, but also fairly silly. What always works in Jigoku is the cinematography and art direction. This is a damn cool looking movie. I wouldn't particularly recommend it, but it's worth seeing just for the cool parts.

This movie spends half of its time in the real world and half in the afterlife. During the first half you ask "where the hell is hell anyway?". After it goes to the "real" hell, you realize that hell is all the things that went undone in the mortal coil.

You realize that if you don't want to live in hell later, don't live in "hell" now.

A great psychedelic trip without psychedelic trappings.