Hausu

[ Note: This is Future Shipwreck's first post by the puckishly erudite and altogether rad writer Dan Rosplock. I'm excited to welcome him as a contributor, and what better way to kick things off than with a post about a brilliant cinematic clusterfuck that we both hold dear to our hearts? Without further ado... ]

It may come as no surprise to anyone who sees Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribably awesome experimental horror/comedy Hausu that the director got his first big break doing commercials for things like cars and men’s deodorant. Now, I realize that might not come off as a ringing endorsement since the phrase “commercial aesthetic” in reference to cinema tends to conjure nightmares of Michael Bay explosions and endless shots of Kristen Stewart staring pensively into the distance doing her concerned lip-bite face, but in this case think of it terms of the considerable talent it takes to craft a truly striking, almost uncannily idealized image.

What if the apple-cheeked youths of a Norman Rockwell illustration (or their Japanese equivalents– a slew of giggling schoolgirls) went on Spring Break to an isolated mansion in the countryside? And what if said youths were trapped in a room with a demon-possessed portrait of a cat projectile vomiting torrents of blood? Hausu tackles these tough questions and oh so many more.

Each of Obayashi’s seven bubbly female protagonists is a character in the most self-consciously one-dimensional sense, right down to their flatly descriptive names. “Fantasy” has a vaguely unsettling romantic obsession with her older male teacher while “Kung Fu” integrates martial arts into every mundane or supernatural situation she is confronted with. These lovable caricatures gallivant carelessly around a world of fluffy kittens and rural splendor until things abruptly go bat-shit insane and they all inevitably succumb to the cartoonish horrors of that titular domicile.

Hausu‘s pleasures are too numerable to mention, let alone analyze. Certainly, part of its appeal stems from the perverse joy one feels upon witnessing the destruction of the false idols of youth and beauty which popular culture presents to us every day. Nearly every shot resembles a too-meticulously arranged tableau, and yet Obayashi himself casually uses every available cheesy special effect in existence to break up his own stunning yet highly “commercial” imagery.

However, beyond merely showing off his iconoclastic abilities the director does something even more intriguing: he presents the possibility of building something completely new and utterly indefinable out of the rubble of those oppressive cultural stereotypes and aesthetic conventions. Ultimately, Hausu is more about rebirth, breathing new if somewhat freaky and unnatural life into dead imagery. At least according to Obayashi’s logic, “Old cats can open doors, but only ghost cats can close them.”

Hausu is currently screening in limited engagements throughout North America, and rumored to be getting a deluxe video release by Criterion later this year. Animated GIF via the always-amazing FourFour.