You need to watch the bonkers Japanese fantasy horror film House

It’s almost spooky season, and like traditional horror movies Return it (extremely hideous) or Evil dead (Stone Cold Classics) are obvious choices for a relaxing movie night at home. But, if you’re looking for something a little more creepy than sinister to get you in the Halloween spirit, I highly recommend the 1977 fantasy horror film. house.

a description house It is an exercise in absurdity. Here’s the basic plot: A girl goes to spend the summer with her aunt after her widowed father brings home a quiet woman and announces that he intends to marry her. When she arrives at the country house, with six of her friends, strange supernatural things immediately start happening.

That’s the gist of it, but it fails to even come close to explaining the sheer insanity contained within its 88-minute runtime. The trailer below offers a small taste.

house It is the vision of director Nobuhiko Obayashi, whose frenetic, hyper-stylized experimentation gives the film its unique visual style. But much of the nightmare logic within can be attributed to the film’s co-writer, Chigumi Obayashi, Nobuhiko’s 10-year-old daughter.

In an interview found on the Blu-ray release of the film, Nobuhiko explained his style, saying:

“Adults can only think about things they understand, so everything stays at this boring, human level. But children come up with things that can’t be explained. They love the strange and the mysterious. The power of cinema is not in what can be explained, but in the strange and inexplicable.”

The result is a film that suddenly and dramatically shifts tones from family melodrama with dark images to slapstick music video to proto-Japanese horror film. Circular napkins and clear, matte-painted backgrounds touch severed heads and gallons of bright red blood. Beneath it all, though, is a narrative firmly rooted in folklore that confronts trauma by embracing pathological absurdity.

House is unlike any other movie you’ve seen. In his review of Philadelphia Inquirer“, Carrie Rickey described it as “too silly to be truly terrifying, but too nightmarish to be merely farcical.” And that’s what makes it so compelling. Its influence on Sam Raimi’s slapstick horror Evil Dead 2 It seems obvious, and he shares DNA with David Lynch Twin Peaks An undercurrent of malevolence is explored through a series of seemingly non-sequiturs.

I have seen house More times than I can count, I still turn away from it and wonder to myself, “Oh my God, did I just watch?” -And I mean that in the best way possible. It’s an undeniable classic that’s impossible to turn away from, and if you’ve never watched it, you owe it to yourself to change that immediately.