Kakashi
                                     
Director:  Tsuruta Norio
Year: 2001
Rating: 6.0
Aka - Scarecrow

This Japanese horror film was turned out during the heyday of J-Horror, but it avoids a lot of the clichés of that sub-genre. No long-haired ghosts or evil in the technology. No passing on a curse. More old fashioned than that. An urban legend that I believe is made up for this film though there are references in Japanese culture about scarecrows (Kakasi) that come to life at night. If scarecrows give you the heebie-jeebies like clowns do to some people, you may want to skip on by. This is fairly low-budget with most of the money going to buying straw I imagine. But not much of a budget is needed to create a mood of disquiet, of unease and this is fairly effective in doing that. A slow score, people staring, others acting strangely, dead silence and of course the scarecrows. That are everywhere. It is festival time in the isolated rural village of Kozukata where strangers are treated like a body sore.



Kaoru (Maho Nonami) isn't able to contact her brother for a week and goes to his apartment to find a letter to him from Izumi (Kou Shibasaki), a classmate in university of Kaoru who had fallen for her brother. The letter asks him to come to Kozukata urgently because she didn't know what was real or fantasy. Kaoru drives there but in the tunnel that is the only way to get in, her car stalls and she has to walk. One taciturn person is collecting Kakashi's and tells her they are for a festival the next night. Another woman has a cradle and inside is a straw baby. Another woman (Hong Kong actress Grace Ip) disappears. Kaoru had seen a Missing Person poster of her before turning off for the road to the village.



Things get creepier when she has to stay the night at Izumi's parents who tell her Izumi is sick and at a clinic. They know nothing about her brother. But then she has horrible dreams in which she sees her brother and then Izumi saying how much she hates her - and wakes up in a fright - but was it a dream? It is festival day and the whole village is gathering with their scarecrows. A windmill turns. The music gets ominous. The leader says it is time to leave. The scarecrows begin to move. And kill. Not my kind of festival. Directed by Tsuruta Norio (Ring O: Birthday) with a low-key touch that is in no rush. Just slowly build up the chill of knowing something bad is going to happen. The rural setting and the strange village people made me think The Wicker Man, though certainly not that good. It is based on a Manga by Junji Ito (Tomei, Uzumaki).