Tokyo Psycho (2004)

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Dir. Atara Oikawa

Strangely, as a bona fide cult film fan at this point, I'm not necessarily going to cheer on the low budget, straight-to-video and/or digitally shot genre movies. The simple reason is that I cannot stand the expected, that I desire great craftsmanship, inspiration, trappings of interest, something that makes a film distinct rather than another generic "crowd favourite". I will go as far as admire a mishap filmed on camera if it's different. Unfortunately this is rare in films regardless of their budget or what they're shot on, but low budget films have a terrible tendency to stay with the conventions, repeat a popular film again (from Halloween (1978) to Dawn of the Dead (1978)) in shoddy ways. Excluding my bias for Japanese cinema, of those low budget films from their country which are of interest, even the lowest budget and erratic ones have something of curiosity. First its clear that they look distinct from their Western counterparts - either the environments or even what cameras are used. Secondly, it's to the point I can differentiate between different strands in Japanese low budget cinema - those that encouraged experimental and personal filmmaking, the nineties video boom that helped bring the likes of Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa to the wide world, the Sushi Typhoon and splatter film from the late 2000s on that have been directed to Western cult film fans, and the uber-low budget works like the one I'm covering. And I've probably forgotten a few other key sub categories too. Thirdly, in general, there has always been a fluidity in Japanese genre films that allow them to stand out greater. A willingness to wander off from conventions and to do the unexpected even if they stay within the narrative structure. You can cross genres, the serious with the silly, the perverse with the normal, the technologically advanced with ancient customs. As I've dug deep into cinema from certain countries long enough, I've hit closer to a distinct tone to them unless they've been over influenced by the Hollywood aesthetics of now, even in the shambolic examples. Like with any other case it causes even a zombie film to be of potential interest when it's a Japanese film because it's the work of people with different outlooks to others bringing their own thoughts to it. I liked Tokyo Psycho knowing full well its drastically flawed and found wanting in places, for the fact of when its good and because of the above reasons.

While the cover itself is great in an unsettling way, the image and the tone its presenting doesn't really match to the actual film. It's suggests a splatter or extreme horror, especially with that title. ("Enjoy your Japanese splatter film..." was close to what the cashier said to me buying a second hand DVD, leading to a brief conversation about Miike and how he could stand everything except Visitor Q (2001)). Instead the film's more of a drama with a horror tone that grows as the plot moves along. It's a very dialogue heavy work despite still qualifying for its horror tag. Contrary to the unexplained opening sequence where a crazed woman wearing a surgical eye patch terrorises the protagonist through the post box slot of her apartment door, a lot of the film is horror in a dramatic sense that has the few moments of nastiness. A career woman is sent a sinister letter - chewed up, soiled, piano wire weaved into the paper - saying that she's only to marry the sender of it. The likelihood is that the sender was a mentally disturbed transfer student from her high school days who she brushed off, but unfortunately, while trying to juggle her everyday life to, it's becoming clear more than a single letter being sent is going to happen. The film could actually be taken up as a skewered take on the concept of marriage. The protagonist has no desire to marry, while her friend and co-worker reveals she's engaged. The stalker's desire to have the protagonist marry him is spurn from unenclosed desires, and there's a wraparound piece of a mother and daughter where all is not what it seems.  

The film, for all its potential flaws, was actually entertaining. I see it as an interesting blend of dramatics with schlocky horror which, with low, low expectations going into, only seeing it as someone who likes to search for obscure Japanese genre films, actually stood out. I cared for the characters and plot, and even now I remember aspects of it clearly more than films I tried to drill into my mind as being good which have fallen by the wayside badly. A film like this also emphasises the fact that, early on, I was taught that films, with exceptions, were all constructions and not reality. Actors performing on sets than leaving for the day. The danger that a day's shooting could be ruined if something gets in the way, and that during takes on intense scenes, the actress might be sat off-set talking on her Blackberry or drinking coffee as the killer eats a sandwich nearby. Lower budget works with less than perfect production value would be more rewarding for me, no matter how schlocky and tacky they are, because I would view them as much as the creations of people with little resources and find something enrapturing in them. My only issue with this, talked about in the first paragraph, is that a lot of these productions chose the least interesting routes for what to put onscreen. Dull, monotonous repetition of what has been done before, not very well usually either, made worse when some of these sorts of films are celebrated. (Which is also way I don't like slasher films either, but that's another day's story). Not true with Tokyo Psycho. It may be predictable in plot, but not in presentation or structure. The stalker, when revealed, is maniac and chewing up the scenery, but I like this hyperactive performance as it shows a commitment to going as far as possible, especially as few A-list actors would willingly have a form of real tape worm in their mouth like he does at one point. The characters are very much fantasy constructs, but inherently most films, not really changing from the first ever ones made with their small entertainments at all the last century or so, have characters who are exaggerations and archetypes, and the ones in this work perfectly. Of fascination, there's little of the extreme content you'd expect from a title like this film has, no nudity or sex, only some violence and extreme threat, and possible no blood at all. The threat when it comes about, against some moments of lurid horror, are actually played starkly and with a less-is-more tone, which actually turns out to be a lot more affecting and distressing than other films that take it further.

A lot of the film could be set in another country, although significantly you would lose the distinct look of the original locations - small, clinical white walled apartments, neutral clean colours, sparse city streets, the Japanese coastline. One advantage the Japanese low budget works have is that, somehow, even on such low budgets, the urban and rural landscapes, the former usually closed in over actors heads, the later dwarfing them, are incredibly distinct and inherently add character to the films. I would wonder too if the interesting idiosyncrasies of this film would be continued in, say, an American interpretation either. A lot of our English language films at this budget still keep to a rigid plotting that is a detriment, with the exception of those one-off oddities that appear occasionally over the decades. What's interesting with these Japanese films like Tokyo Psycho, entertainingly, is the small details including the flaws that you don't get in English language films. The lengthy scene at a school reunion, a small group of actors in a room, that both had a logic breaking moment that actually adds to the film's weird charm and that it takes it time with characters you will never see again, including a true-or-dare game with raunchy confessions and everyone looking at an old school photo. The boss at the protagonist's workplace who takes pleasure from being insulted and called monstrous in an odd friendly interactivity. How casually the stalker plot is depicted amongst the other drama, never heightened except when the music peaks up, including a piano literally being punched repeatedly at one point. That mysterious woman with the eye patch never seen again or made part of the actual narrative. Scrappy, messy genre films like this exist in other countries, and I prefer them to the "better" made ones usually because they probably say more about the people who made them then a serious document could. What an ordinary person would put onscreen if given the chance to make movies but with a few significant handicaps to work around. And I realise I take more entertainment legitimately from films like this, even with flaws the size of canyons, because they don't pretend to be more than what they are and succeed further because of this. Any clichés this film has are at least done in a interesting way for once.