Fantasia 2024 Review: ‘House of Sayuri’ Injects Wacky Comedy into Bleak J-Horror
It can only mean one thing when a family moves into a new house in a Japanese horror film: they’re about to be tormented by the vengeful spirit of a murdered girl. That’s the premise for J-horror icon Kōji Shiraishi’s (Noroi: The Curse, Sadako vs. Kayako) new film, House of Sayuri, which had its North American premiere at Fantasia Festival last month. Adapted from Rensuke Oshikiri’s lesser-known manga Sayuri, the film introduces a promising twist: it’s the dementia-ridden grandmother who steps up to defend the house and uncover the truth behind the spirit’s untimely death.
Spanning three generations, the Kamiki family are a tight-knit group of seven who have moved into a large, spacious house from their cramped apartment, thanks to their father’s (Zen Kajihara) hard work. The first half of the film follows a conventional J-horror narrative as Sayuri begins haunting the family with eerie whispers and laughter, a frightening figure caught in the peripheral vision of eldest son Norio (Ryôka Minamide) and his younger brother Shun (Ray Inomata). When middle child Keiko (Kokoro Morita) begins exhibiting strange behaviour — including pushing Shun face-first into a wall — it’s not long before Sayuri starts killing off the Kamiki family one by one, erasing their light humour.
Shiraishi creates an eerie atmosphere as the haunting builds into effective scares and harrowing deaths. It’s a slow burn that occasionally ventures into boring, but the filmmaking is always well done. The second half of the film, however, completely changes tone when Grandma Harue (Toshie Negishi) suddenly becomes lucid and injects wacky comedy into the film’s bleak horror. She teams up with Norio and his schoolmate Sumida (Hana Komodo), who can see spirits, to not only defend the house against Sayuri, but to also figure out what happened to her.
No longer the confused, sweet and fragile grandmother we were introduced to, Harue switches to a badass, punk rock style and reveals her previously hidden knowledge of tai-chi. “You’ll need to start intensive training to strengthen your lifeforce,” she tells Norio, before a training montage ensues. She also encourages Norio to hide his fear and use “cheerful banter” to weaken Sayuri’s spirit. The traditional disquieting score becomes more exciting, injecting rock and metal flares into the soundtrack to complement Harue’s eccentric personality.
While the film’s tonal shifts don’t always flow seamlessly, Shiraishi has fun beginning House of Sayuri with familiar tropes before subverting them all with an original take on J-horror, straight from the mind of Oshikiri, who adapted his manga for screen alongside Shiraishi and Mari Asato. Usually, the murdered girl is thin with long, dark hair, but Sayuri is an overweight girl due to living as a hikikomori (a social recluse), which presents strikingly different imagery, though it still riffs on the traditional. Sayuri’s origin remains deeply sad, shocking and tragic, but more grounded in reality. There’s also more blood and on-screen deaths than you’d expect, in addition to a high body count as the film lets you know that nobody is safe from Sayuri’s vengeance.
House of Sayuri explores what can happen when an unconventional character gets to take charge of a serious and bleak situation. The increasingly offbeat humour brings a refreshing respite to an otherwise harrowing journey, which makes it stand out from the J-horrors that came before it. Shiraishi and Oshikiri have crafted a deliciously unique experience regardless of the film’s flaws, proving that J-horror is more than ready for its mainstream revival.
