Although it is clearly either incompetence, lack of budget or indefference to failure that make House so one of its kind -maybe even all three-, in the end it is an hour and a half of pure unapologetic stimuli that is hard to shake off.
The combination of an unprecedented directing style and an unprecedented writing style somehow plays like two wrongs making a right. It is so weird, that any conventional sense of humor or horror doesn't apply to House being a "horror comedy". It isn't funny or scary enough; at least not for the right reasons. But also, those two adjectives are just too small and restrinctive to define it, really.
I was looking for something fun and original to get my hands on, that I could have a blast with, that could catch me off guard. I finally heard this film descripted as a "nuts Japanese film, about a group of girls that are eaten by a house set to colorful psychedelics and upbeat music". I said "I'm in". I rolled my blunts and got stoned at least to the point where I could still understand the basic plot. I didn't, but it wasn't my fault.
Needless to say, I had a blast. I don't rate movies as high experiences (in which case this would have a perfect score), so I decided to see it again sober, and I have to say, as clumsy as it may seem on the surface, it is quite impressive. Every scene is its own sacrilect statement to the art of filmmaking, so much so that at first it can trick you into thinking it is a children's movie. It is not. It contains enough blood and nudity to have an R rating at least.
I'm not surprised at all about all of the underground praise this movie gets despite the Japanese critic's distaste for it when it came out. The truth is it was so ridiculous and amateurishly put together by former commercial dirtector Nobuhiko Obayashi, that it ended up breaking new grounds.
In a Trouth Mask Replica kind of way, you can't tell for sure if the people involved are either very ignorant and punching above their weight, or highly ambitious and punching below it. Is it a striking success or a deafening failure? It has convoluted editing, anachronistic sound design, obnoxious soudtrack, and it works! This film is effective in the first place because it misifres so much, you can't help but admit it's consistent.
I'm not automatically a big fan of it. It doesn't work all the way through for me as it can get boring in the corniest of moments. I'm probably not seeing it again unless I'm doing pot or with friends or something. But its whacky style is sure to gain it fresh fans even today; it is that original. Those that are open-minded have a chance to get a novelty to fall in love with.
I recommend it, but only to those who are truly up to the test of surrendering disbilief -not only in logic, but also in our pre-conceptions of how films should be overall- in the search for something greater.
The combination of an unprecedented directing style and an unprecedented writing style somehow plays like two wrongs making a right. It is so weird, that any conventional sense of humor or horror doesn't apply to House being a "horror comedy". It isn't funny or scary enough; at least not for the right reasons. But also, those two adjectives are just too small and restrinctive to define it, really.
I was looking for something fun and original to get my hands on, that I could have a blast with, that could catch me off guard. I finally heard this film descripted as a "nuts Japanese film, about a group of girls that are eaten by a house set to colorful psychedelics and upbeat music". I said "I'm in". I rolled my blunts and got stoned at least to the point where I could still understand the basic plot. I didn't, but it wasn't my fault.
Needless to say, I had a blast. I don't rate movies as high experiences (in which case this would have a perfect score), so I decided to see it again sober, and I have to say, as clumsy as it may seem on the surface, it is quite impressive. Every scene is its own sacrilect statement to the art of filmmaking, so much so that at first it can trick you into thinking it is a children's movie. It is not. It contains enough blood and nudity to have an R rating at least.
I'm not surprised at all about all of the underground praise this movie gets despite the Japanese critic's distaste for it when it came out. The truth is it was so ridiculous and amateurishly put together by former commercial dirtector Nobuhiko Obayashi, that it ended up breaking new grounds.
In a Trouth Mask Replica kind of way, you can't tell for sure if the people involved are either very ignorant and punching above their weight, or highly ambitious and punching below it. Is it a striking success or a deafening failure? It has convoluted editing, anachronistic sound design, obnoxious soudtrack, and it works! This film is effective in the first place because it misifres so much, you can't help but admit it's consistent.
I'm not automatically a big fan of it. It doesn't work all the way through for me as it can get boring in the corniest of moments. I'm probably not seeing it again unless I'm doing pot or with friends or something. But its whacky style is sure to gain it fresh fans even today; it is that original. Those that are open-minded have a chance to get a novelty to fall in love with.
I recommend it, but only to those who are truly up to the test of surrendering disbilief -not only in logic, but also in our pre-conceptions of how films should be overall- in the search for something greater.