A FILM that aims to shock by declaring its intention through its title is bound to fail. This Japanese film titled Creepy succeeds because it is, indeed, creepy. The film achieves its creepiness mainly because it is directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi. You cannot call him “Kiyoshi”, because that is his first name.
That is tantamount to calling Spielberg “Steve” and Lucas “George”. Thus, you call him “Kurosawa”. This means summoning the power in the films like Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ran and many others that had taught all cineastes and students of film about the poetry and silence of cinema. The director of these classics is Kurosawa Akira, who you cannot call simply as “Akira”.
Kurosawa Kiyoshi, therefore, has to live to the greatness of that name, not in terms of lineage but in matters of recall. While Kurosawa Akira’s works are already embedded in our filmic consciousness, the mental image and reference points by which people have to recognize this living, technically younger Kurosawa are yet to develop
There is an exception to this anxiety, which borders on the childish and the unnecessary: There are the Japanese film enthusiasts, and they are numerous, who will easily recognize the other “Kurosawa”. Kurosawa Kiyoshi is no stranger to fame. His first works made him a front runner in the horror-thriller genre. Two works come to mind: Serpent’s Path and Eyes of the Spider. Both films dealt with a father taking revenge on the crime committed against his daughter. Both films crisscrossed the path between a criminal and a psychopath. Justice and the search for it became part of the liminal in the mind of the person.
In 2015 Kurosawa Kiyoshi was invited to participate in the Cannes Film Festival under the section Un Certain Regard. His film was Journey to the Shore, which won him the Best Director prize.
Creepy followed his Cannes triumph. Premiered in Berlin in 2016, the film brought Kurosawa’s horror stories into the realm of a marriage and its undercurrent of breakup and conflicts, of neighbors that do not seem to follow the tradition of politeness, and of endings that don’t consider any element of redemption and resolution
The film tells the story of Takakura (Nishijima Hidetoshi), a detective who has retired from his police work and is now teaching in a university. Takakura and his wife, Yasuko, have transferred to a suburb, a place closer to his work. There is an early onset of boredom as Takakura realizes he has too much free time in his hand.
The first day of the couple in their new home sees them going to their neighbors to introduce themselves. As customary in Japanese society, the newly transferred family has to bring a simple gift to the neighbors, usually those living beside, in front and behind them.
The neighbors knowing fully well this tradition is expected to welcome the new acquaintances. The first neighbor visited tells the Takakuras that they’re not into this practice, quite odd and mean in basically polite Japanese society.
The second neighbor is not the first visit. During the second visit, with only Yasuko, the wife, bringing the gift, a mean middle-aged man is introduced. Moody and seemingly secretive, Nishino appears to be covering up something. But there are days when he becomes the friendliest person in the community, inviting even for a drink Takakura.
Yasuko at first is wary of Nishino but she soon invites the man and his “daughter” to their home. One of the scariest scenes in the film is when Takakura arrives from the university to find the “moody” nearly eccentric neighbor at their home.
Here is where the mastery of the horror-thriller genre by Kurosawa becomes apparent. We get scared not so much by the appearance of the monster, or the discovery of the identity of the killer, but by the dark and exciting journey to realizations. There’s no “aha” moment in the film; there is simply the shock of recognition of who we are as people.
Kurosawa is a cultivated taste. He creates a universe where homes are not already homes, where illnesses like depression can hide mothers away from the prying eyes of a community or society. Kurosawa exploits with ease a Japanese home and family by breaking apart its walls very slowly.
In the middle of his retirement from a job as a profiler, Takakura is visited by a colleague. At that point, Takakura stumbles upon an unsolved case of disappearance in Hino City, a suburb of Tokyo. The friend tries to interest Takakura to go back once more to his job as a detective. At first Takakura is violently against the notion of being a detective again. Yasuko, his wife, does not hide her misgivings about her husband again going into crime-scene investigation.
As Takakura gets further involved in the reinvestigation, his wife looks like she will undergo depression.
The unique and seductive charm of Kurosawa’s storytelling is that the crime is just a way of leading us in and out of the human psyche. In Creepy, the chill is brought on by the shifting moods of the characters and not by who is the bad man or bad woman. There are no villains in Kurosawa’s film. As in his early films about avenging fathers, the discovery that the father who is out to seek justice for his daughter has become himself a man with criminal intent. Human nature is a tricky business in Kurosawa’s depiction of a Japanese home. Yasuko does something that surprises her husband. When queried, she goes into a fit. There’s no answer to the volatility of the human persona in this drama about appearances and disappearances.
What scares us in Creepy is not the corpse in an abandoned house, nor the death of any kidnapped victims, but the dark, dark journey into the human soul. Takakura is a good profiler, but is clueless about himself and his wife.
In Kurosawa’s crime scene, policemen disappear into traps and or get burned and become suspects, instead of saviors. This and all are creepy.
As the detective, Nishijima is stoic and sexy, a combination that is lethal and almost illegal. He appeared in Ami Naderi’s Cut, in a performance that was widely praised. And yet, it is Nishino, as portrayed by Neruyuki Kagawa, that takes our breath away. There is something gross and evil in his character but, as soon as we get a hold of his meanness, he disappears into a kind of Everyman. Terrific and terrifying.