My favorite part of 2005's Gurozuka is the last shot, the last line spoken in the film, the line that sends us off into the credits, where star Morishita Chisato looks at the camera and just says, "Huh?" It's perfect. It sums up this strike-while-the-genre-is-cold slasher picture in a way that no review could.
This movie is absolutely terrible.
I'll run through the conceit for you, then the plot beats. Be warned: there are SPOILERS — but dear God, don't see this movie for yourself because there are only so many hours in your life. Spending the film's run time of one hour and 23 minutes doing anything else with your time will be the better choice. Stirring a pot of boiling water for an hour and 23 minutes while staring at the fridge is more rewarding than watching Gurozuka because you will build valuable arm skills and improve your zoning out record.
Gurozuka is a Japanese take on the cabin-in-the woods slasher film, an attempt to merge Friday the 13th and Evil Dead with The Ring in a way that does the good parts of those films poorly and spaces them out with scenes that end abruptly because of bad editing. The slasher is masked like Jason and, in the only good choice that the film makes, the mask is a grinning, dead-eyed Japanese Noh theater mask. It's creepy even on a sunny day. That's all it has going for it.
Like The Ring, Gurozuka begins with two high school girls, Ai and Maki, watching a CURSED VIDEO from 7 years before. We don't know it's cursed. They just find it in the A/V room of their school and choose to watch it while eating popcorn, which, sure, I guess is natural when you find an unlabeled reel of film with a minute of footage on it on a shelf in your club room.
Again, like The Ring, this weird video is jerky with awkward cuts and a genuine air of menace to it. Two women, both wearing kimonos and the carved, expressionless Noh masks, are shown performing some kind of ritual that involves 1. Talking to someone on a cell phone, 2. A wicker doll nailed to a tree, and 3. Waving your arms around a lot. One takes a hand axe and strikes the other repeatedly, then stalks towards the camera. That's it, that's the whole movie. It's over in less time than it took you to read this paragraph.
Oh — and they're watching it on a film projector but throughout the rest of the movie it's played from a cassette. No one cares. It doesn't matter. We all make mistakes, and that's how we grow.
Ai and Maki (two people) comprise their high school's film club. This grainy cinematic masterpiece of arm flailing inspires them to call up the school's drama club (three people) to film a horror movie at the very site that the cursed film was recorded! Was that information on the tape? Nope! But they schedule a film shoot there anyway.
To get us to this literal cabin in the woods, we see three very overdressed girls (Natsuki, Yuka, and Yayoi) meet up with the girls we saw before (Ai and Maki), who are then picked up by a teacher (Maki's older sister, Ms. Yoko) and a moody, silent student (Takako). Takako has no reason for being there. She has no reason for being in this movie. She is not the killer and no one wants to spend time with her so she just sits in a goddam bedroom for 90% of the movie.
The drama starts when the drama club asks about the script and the film club tells them it's a horror movie, but it's all improvised. This shows a lack of preparation on the drama club's side, who at this point are more or less jumping into a van with strangers who told them, "We can get you a gig, come with us." This is, in fact, how much of Hollywood and kidnappings work. In Gurozuka, though, it just feels like the writer couldn't figure out how to get all the girls out into the woods so he threw something together that isn't how real life works.
Maybe the cursed film told them psychically to drive out to a well-built, well-maintained lodge in the middle of the woods. Maybe the cursed film knew to keep the power on, the water running, and the water heater going while not connecting any of the phones. Maybe the cursed film moonlights as a travel planner, bringing tour groups to exotic locations that, despite being enormous, don't have a road going to them. And then kills them.
The amateur filmmakers park and then walk an excruciatingly long time through the woods, which blew my mind because is there no access road? How did people build this lodge with no access road? If the TV or stove dies, does someone have to carry a new one hours up and down hills to install it? These girls walked from early afternoon to early evening. WHY IS THIS HOUSE SO SECLUDED? WHO BUILT THIS INACCESSIBLE HOUSE? And why do these girls assume they can just take a shower when they get there? Why are there sheets on the beds? What is the goddam purpose of this goddam isolated house?
Then nothing happens. For a long time.
Natsuki goes outside and makes faces into a mirror for a bit (I do not know why she did this) and has a split second vision of the cursed film that she did not see. Some girls start cooking dinner. Natsuki then takes a shower — but as she gets ready, a shadowy figure passes by the window in the other room. Despite clearly having her back to this window, and also not being in the same room as the window itself, she somehow sees this and looks outside ... to find nothing. This movie drags in ways unimagined in the West.
The scene ends and we're at dinner. They wonder where Ms. Yoko is and then she appears. She brings food (two bags of chips and … mayonnaise) to Takako, who is sequestered in an upstairs room and has no business in the scene or the movie. In a masterstroke of cinema, Ms. Yoko stands awkwardly in the doorway, says, "It's dinnertime, Takako," and drops the food on the bed. Neither one of them says anything else. The scene does not edit where it should. It goes on. Too long. No one says anything. The scene ends. The only thing this establishes is "Takako is upstairs with chips," none of which is relevant.
Maki shows the rest of the girls the cursed videotape with a camcorder that she's already hooked up to the TV. They recognize it as a retelling of a Noh ghost play called "Kurotsuka" but with a murder at the end. Ai tells the story, which is about a demon woman killing a bunch of monks, but Ai admits that the tape they found (oh — the title card on the tape is "Gurozuka." There's the title) bears little resemblance to the monk murder tale. It just eats up more movie run time and throws in another red herring.
Maki tells the group (and Ms. Yoko, who's entered the scene) that she looked into this tape. The year it was made, one of the film club members disappeared and the other was sent to a mental hospital. Was a real murder captured on film?
As it so happens, yes. And the film club wants to shoot an improvised movie about this over the course of, like, a day or two with a cast who just this moment heard of the plot. This is like Build Your Own Blair Witch Project but with less budget and more G-rated shower scenes (and an equivalent amount of wicker dolls nailed to trees).
The next day, all the food's vanished and everyone just fucks off to wander around the lodge some more.
Natsuki takes the other two drama club girls to film herself posing for the camera by some trees in future grainy "last known photo" footage that we often see in news reports. Did I mention that all of these actresses were swimsuit and lingerie models who were making a career jump to acting? No one really has a handle on how to do that just yet, so it's a collection of awkward line readings and really wooden blocking. Natsuki gets pouty and struts off, only to be seen much later, dirty, presumed dead.
Anyway, the film goes nowhere for a very long time. The only highlight is that Ai and Maki, as they're wandering aimlessly in the woods, stumble on the location where the original cursed film was shot. And there's a freshly dug hole there! Where a body might have been buried seven years ago! And dug up again! Was it? I don't know! Maybe? Probably? It's never explained. We don't see a body later if there was one. So, hole found!
In the West we're accustomed to Japanese cinema where, even if the budget is low, there's enough camera tricks and good editing to hide that. Tsukamoto Shin'ya's Tetsuo: The Iron Man comes to mind. Gurozuka doesn't rely on any of that. The editing is done in a way where scenes end too abruptly (cutting off music mid-note) or too late. There's a lot of Manos: Hands of Fate scenes of people walking places. And although this film is supposed to take place in the lonesome, empty woods, it's impossible to miss the sounds of cars driving by, off camera. It's cheap, cheap filmmaking and like so much cheap, cheap filmmaking in the United States, it really, really sucks.
The plot that's been strung together up until now falls apart when, despite all the food being stolen, Yuka and Yayoi cook dinner using a table full of food. I don't know why the scene is in there, other than it's time for another red herring where someone gets sick from poisoned mushrooms. We sense a little friction between Yuka and Yayoi as they prep the mushrooms, with Yayoi calling Yuka an "idiot" under her breath, but that's as far as that goes.
Anyway, Yuka gets poisoned and throws up a lot. Takako is … there now? She hasn't been out of her room all day, but now she's standing in the kitchen with zero expression. Yayoi is also there, zero expression. I think this was a director's trick to get you to suspect both of them as poisoners, but neither one is a capable actor so they stand around like pylons in a field, watching a girl retch and writhe.
Then out of fucking nowhere, Takako breaks into a laugh so fake you'd think she was on reality TV. It's like one of those moments where a director tells her to start laughing … and then doesn't tell her to stop? So when Maki runs up and shakes her she just keeps cackling, making her seem either unhinged or just bad at acting like a human being in her first big scene.
Oh, she falls down too, that's never explained.
But then the funniest part of the movie just … happens. I think what the director, Nishiyama Yôichi, was trying to do was have this scene of chaos occur — a girl vomiting, a teacher comforting, a friend panicking, a girl collapsing – and then freeze on it. And then as the scene freezes he does a pan over to capture all this chaos in one shot. I think that's what he was trying to do. But what happens is that the cast — mostly — gets into position, physically freezes, the pan starts … and Morishita Chisato (the actress playing Ai) turns her head. There is no other way to understand why the people in this scene are (badly) acting the way they're (badly) acting, other than something went wrong and they used this take. Look for yourself.
The next morning, two things occur: one, Ms. Yoko walks to get help; two, Ai watches the footage that Natsuki filmed of her skulking sexily through the trees, getting her glamor shot in. In the first scene, there is the sound of birds and Ms. Yoko looks worried and then nothing happens, the scene cuts. In the second, Ai sees a woman in a Noh mask charge out and hack Natsuki with an axe! The scene ends like someone turned off the camera, which doesn't make sense because Natsuki was filming it herself and couldn't edit while dead.
Oh — and a third thing happens. We see that it was mean girl Yayoi who stole the food! And, like the mighty black bear that eats food out of campsites and scatters it everywhere, she's in the woods eating as much of it as she can as messily as she can. It's MESSY. It's like a suitcase full of Amelia Earhart met a convention full of crabs. She's muttering that she hates everybody and will starve them to death. The scene cuts on her double fisting raw hot dogs. Amazingly enough, the actress, Saitô Keiko, was nominated for an Award of the Japanese Academy just 10 years prior. Shows how life can take you strange places.
As you've seen, nearly an hour has passed with really not much going on. The cursed video is creepy, but nothing else has been. There are a few jump scares with the mask, but that's about it.
Oh! And the music! The music is Twin Peaks. Not stealing Angelo Badalamenti's score, but it's that same tension-filled, drawn out synthesizer string sound that David Lynch loved using for suspenseful scenes in Twin Peaks. Just, all the time. Every scene that has music is this tense synth nonsense. The only time it ceases is when someone gets killed, there's suddenly a loud, fast beat on some high-pitched cymbals for a while. Fucking reckless percussion. If you want to imagine what it sounds like, it's more or less the beginning measures of "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin. Put that in your horror movie.
Ai reaches Maki, who's been wandering the woods for some reason, and tells her about the video she's seen where Natsuki's been chopped to death. Running through the woods, back to the lodge, they stumble on Natsuki's body, now burnt from the waist up, and then Yayoi's body, throat slashed, surrounded by flowers. You've eaten your last raw hot dog off the ground, Yayoi, and you will be missed. Also, you can see her breathing.
They rush back to the house, where Ms. Yoko is not, but Takako is, back up in her room. Yuka is feeling better after the mild poisoning, so they gather around the table so Maki can tell them her theory about the killer. Since we have to justify the Noh play that was depicted in the cursed video — otherwise why use it? — Maki explains that the three killings so far (the woman in the original video, Natsuki, and Yayoi) very very very loosely resemble the five acts of a Noh play, one that we hadn't really been told before. It certainly wasn't the one about the monks because it makes no sense in any context.
The first act is about the main character, the actress killed in the video. The second act is about war, so the burning of Natsuki's body was like, um, burning things in war. The third act is about the spirit of flowers, which is perfect for Yayoi's Midsommar-themed killing. The fourth is dealer's choice, doesn't matter. In the fifth one, the main character goes mad.
I can't believe that they went with the Se7en/Abominable Dr. Phibes/Theater of Blood explanation, that there's a list that the killer is checking off. At least in Se7en you got multiple scenes of Morgan Freeman looking at books in libraries for info on the seven deadly sins. In Dr. Phibes you have the part where the detective consults the rabbi to learn why Phibes is killing according to the ten plagues. But here it's Maki just covering all of that in like eight lines and never speaking of it again.
And Ai remarks that it must be Ms. Yoko and Takaka who are doing the killings, because it's too much for one person to do alone. Ha ha, we find out it's only one person later on.
So they hunker down for the night (minus Takaka, who they assume is a murderer, out in the woods or something). When Yuka goes off to the bathroom, Takaka bursts in and tries strangling her. But she's not the murderer! In fact, she's just pissed at Yuka because Yuka stole her boyfriend and spread rumors that she was a lesbian! She was, in fact, trying to poison Yuka the previous night with the mushrooms. Then their confrontation is interrupted by a pounding on the door.
It's Ms. Yoko, suspect #1, covered in blood. (Oh, and it turns out she was there at the filming of the cursed video, but she wasn't either of the actresses on film.) She wants in but Ai says no and tells the other three girls to run upstairs. As Ai spars with Ms. Yoko, screams are heard from the floor above. Within seconds, Ms. Yoko is gone from the window and there's the bloody mask woman again.
Now, I'm going to spoil the ending. There's about 13 minutes left in the film and I'm going to give you part of the big reveal. The killer is one of the three girls who ran out of the room, Maki, Takaka, or Yuka, and I already told you up front it's not Takaka. For this to have worked, the killer had to either put on the costume while running upstairs, then slashed the other two girls, then ran outside to spook Ai (within the space of one minute and 29 second of screen time), or she got upstairs, slashed the girls, and went outside to put on a mask and wig and kimono. Unbelievable.
Mask woman chases Ai around the house a bit, hacks apart a TV stand with the axe, and gets her outside, running through the woods like every respectable final girl.
And just who does she trip over on her exodus into the forest? Takaka (the poisoner) and Yuka (the poisoned), both axed up pretty good, which is amazing since last we saw them they were running upstairs where they audibly died. Yup, that means Maki, the fellow film club member, is the murderer, and has been the whole time. She dragged the bodies out here for some reason. Not a good use of time management, but I've never killed anyone so I don't know how that works.
But Takaka isn't 100% dead yet, so she gets to throw some words of spite at Ai, a character who has not interacted with her for more than maybe two scenes. Takaka hates Ai. And always has, I guess. She wishes that she'd poisoned everyone. Now that she's dying of a massive head wound, she just has to fire off those last few spitballs to show the world that she is so pissed off at these other girls. She is so pissed off despite spending nearly all of this movie's runtime in a bedroom upstairs, eating chips and mayonnaise. You could have stayed home, Takaka, and eaten chips and mayonnaise by yourself.
Maki comes around, still wearing the mask and the kimono and the wig and DEAR GOD HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO DRESS FOR A DAMN KILLING? This is like at least 20 minutes worth of work and she pulled it off in a minute 29 and murdered at least one teen girl.
Ms. Yoko pops up again to confront her younger sister, who pulls off the mask for the big reveal. The tape was cursed the whole time! And Ms. Yoko was keeping it in her room the whole time! Or maybe they found it in the A/V room and the writer just forgot where they found it! Anything is possible — this is a terrible movie!
After revealing that the original killing was just two actresses who didn't get along, and that Maki pushed her off a cliff offscreen earlier, Ms. Yoko gets an axe to the head from her sister. The chase continues until Ai fails miserably at hiding behind a tree and Maki spills the beans on her motive. Not the Noh theater 5-act thing. That's been forgotten by this point. No, she's in love with Ai. And she wants to express that love by killing and eating her.
Maki was harboring this feeling from the beginning, but since she saw the cursed tape she became cursed (by the tape) to something something murder people according to this threadbare plot device. It ignores that last hour and 17 minutes we've been watching, all the red herrings, all the forced symbolism, all the traditional Japanese theater constructs, and just goes with some wonky line about "I'll kill you because I love you."
Oh, and eat you after, too. Anyway, as Maki whips the axe up, Ai stabs her in the heart with the wicker doll with a nail through it that was introduced briefly numerous paragraphs ago and hadn't made an appearance up until now. That's how awful this film is. Remember that thing? That thing that you thought we lingered on too long because the director of photography wasn't that good? It actually was super important and very different from all the other stuff that we shot for too long because the director of photography wasn't that good.
And then…blackness. Convenient blackness that could mean a million things. Really, this was just inserted to transition us to the final scene, where Ai wakes up on the floor of the lodge calling for … Ms. Yoko? Yup! Of all the casualties, Ms. Yoko didn't die. SHe just got a big head wound that Ai helped her patch up and now she's under the spell of the cursed tape too. Ms. Yoko starts repeating the same lines that Maki did when she unexpectedly began confessing her love and admiration for Ai. It's creepy but it also feels contrived, like the movie didn't have a satisfying ending so they brought back a dead character to continue a cycle that we assumed wasn't a cycle until the last 3 minutes.
Ai doesn't get it either.
To be clear, this is the final shot of the film, the final line of dialogue. She doesn't say, "What?" which would be "Nani?". She just audibly goes, "Huh?" and that's the game. That's all the depth you get.
This movie failed in nearly every way it could. Due to dozens of plot holes, misedited scenes (the attempted murder of Ms. Yoko must have been that shot of her listening to birds that ended abruptly), actresses that couldn't carry the roles, and unexciting, flaccid directing choices, this film just doesn't have much I can recommend. The Noh mask is creepy, but deserves another shot at stardom beyond this flop. Critics hated it too, pointing out that nothing really happens for the first half other than spats between the characters (remember the stolen food subplot that led nowhere?). Rotten Tomatoes has no reviews, but it's achieved a respectable 4.8 out of 10 on IMDb, which makes me kinda sad. It's a bad film.
But, there is a happy ending, of sorts. The lead, Morishita Chisato, ended up quitting acting 14 years after this film was released and got into politics. She is currently a member of the House of Representatives of Japan. Because that's what final girls do.
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