Marebito (film)

Marebito is an Asian horror film directed by Takashi Shimizu, the director of Ju-on series and embodies the amalgamation of Japanese horror cinema and Lovecraftian Western movies. With its low budget and indie style, Marebito has overreached itself by depicting the self-scouring odyssey of a cameraman called Masuoka who pursues the ultimate terror and is ready to cold-heartedly murder innocent people just to achieve that moment of terror. The film effectively illustrates the fall of the obsessed man, recurrent in Frankenstein, Death Note, and Lovecraft’s Re-animator. However, what distinguishes this film from its predecessors, is how the terror is depicted.

While to the end of the film, the cause of absolute terror is not specified, and it surely is not seeing one or two deros or F, the female blood-sucking pet he brings from the other world to his home, we accompany the character to the moment he reaches what he has sought for, and we are free to speculate what the cause of the terror in his face in the last shot is. Therefore, despite Marebito’s lineage in other literary and cinematic works, Marebito refuses to depict what exactly the final destination of Masuoka’s quest was and keeps terror as abstract as it is. The subtle implication that Masuoka has finally achieved his goal is his expression in the final shot of the film, where his eyes widen with true terror, staring at the faintly smiling face of his creature. As he descends from humanity, he also descends the stairs to the underworld, to live with the obscurities of the other world, where there is no need for words.

Masuoka’s last sentences, stating the unnecessacity of speech, reflect the same impressive approach of the film to the subject of terror, for in his internal monologue Masuoka chooses no words to describe the ultimate terror. The conceptual film leaves the audience with the question of the identity of terror and perhaps this is the most apt act, since what induces the ultimate terror is different for each person, as are abstract concepts such as beauty or happiness.