Notable Cast: Koki, Riku Hagiwara, Keiko Horiuchi,
Rinka Otani, Haruka Imou, Akaji Maro, Satoru Matsuo, Fumiya Takahashi, Naoki
Tanaka, Satoru Date, Riko
At just over the fifteen-minute mark in Takashi Shimizu’s
latest horror flick, Ox-Head Village, our leading lady and her
“not-boyfriend” go to a smaller seaside town looking to investigate a viral
video. An announcement over a loudspeaker is made, “the mirages are about
to appear.” Everyone skitters to the water’s edge to see the mirages and Kanon,
the lead character of this story played by Koki, starts to see the forms of
people on the water. Ghostly people.
Although this would seem like the first ghostly images to
start off a horror film, we’re already fifteen minutes into a Shimizu story. That
means we’ve already seen plenty of visual trickery, ghostly images, and classic
unnerving subtle spook work. Unattached hands, vague visages of oxen's head,
and a minor case of doppelganger reflections. By the time these ‘mirages’ show
up, Ox-Head Village has already been littering the landscape with
classic J-horror visuals and tones. You’re damn right, it’s a Shimizu
film.
The first fifteen minutes of Ox-Head Village is a
stark reminder of why the previously appointed sub-genre of J-Horror, an entire
tone and style that Shimizu helped establish with his Ju-On (Grudge)
films, can be so damn compelling. This third part of his “Village Trilogy,”
which includes Howling Village and Suicide Forest Village, is
Shimizu going back to the well that has kept him a staple of the haunted genre
for decades. It’s also the best one of the trilogy.
It’s no Marebito or Ju-On: The Grudge, but Ox-Head
Village is definitely one of his best in a long, long time. It’s a film
crammed full of ghastly shocks, spooks, and seething concepts around sins of
the past, present, and possible future. It provides that reminder of why
Shimizu is so good at blurring lines between reality, nightmare, and the realms
of life, death, and the purgatorial states in between.
The obstacle that this auteur-lite director has always faced
is whether or not the story he’s telling actually aligns with his style or the
concepts he’s dabbling in. With Ox-Head Village (and so many other
J-horror films) much of the plot is saved for the mystery on hand. Kanon and
her “not boyfriend,” Ren, find this viral video about a haunted facility. The
girls in the video go to scare their friend Shion, also played by Koki, and she
suddenly disappears after a potentially deadly elevator accident. Intrigued by
the idea, they set off toward the titular rural community to investigate
Kanon’s doppelganger. Naturally, the plot becomes increasingly convoluted as it
goes, introducing the audience to entire cult rituals, plenty of
ox-head-wearing kids, and a family secret that will possibly haunt everyone for
eternity.
You know. The usual.
While the script with its increasingly complex plot and
secondary characters that fade in and out of relevance do become a smidge trope
laden by the final act, it’s the hazy sense of time, reality, and cognizant
narrative that carry Ox-Head Village on and throughout. Yes, many of the
scares might be fairly run-of-the-mill for the genre, but there are a handful
of these horror sequences that truly do inspire some shock. The use of an
elevator shaft sequence in the opening sets the tone nicely, there’s a
fantastic reveal of a ghost in repetition around a splashing puddle of water,
and the finale features one of Shimizu’s classic dream-like sequences that
pushes the blur button on reality. If you wanted to see a dozen kids running
around with ox heads, you’ve got your wish.
If anything, it is the pacing of the film that ends up being
the biggest hurdle to leap over. Ox-Head Village comes out with all the
J-horror spooks blazing, it ends in a creepy chase sequence that seemingly
navigates multiple periods of time and features just enough cannibalism to
snare a few gags in the audience, but the middle mystery portion ends up
slowing the pacing down quite a bit. It’s spattered with a few solid kills,
including a second (!) elevator demise that pops with a jarring crunch, but it
is incredibly heavy on the detectiving (yes, I know that’s not a word) to keep
up the energy. Not that this is unusual for one of Shimizu’s newer horror
films, but it’s something to keep in mind.
In the end, like the previously mentioned mirages in that
early sequence, Ox-Head Village toys admirably with the perception of
its audience. While Shimizu has frequently revisited this concept and stylistic
approach in his horror films, most of his more recent output has not found the
balance as this film manages to create. There are some solid performances,
particularly from Koki, and many of the ghost scares and ethereal tone changes
easily make up for the patchy script work and lower budget constraints. For
this “Village Trilogy,” Ox-Head Village finds the best balance and
manages to reaffirm why Shimizu still has some savvy in him.
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