Otogirisou 
弟切草 「Otogirisou」
Release Date: January 27th, 2001
Duration: 96 mins.
Director: Ten Shimoyama
Writer: Ten Shimoyama, Takenori Sentou, Shuukei Nagasaka, Gorou Nakajima (Screenplay),
Starring: Megumi Okina, Youichirou Saitou, Reiko Matsuo, Koji Ohkura, Minoru Terada,
Otogirisou was one of the original visual novel games. First released by Chunsoft in 1992 before being ported to the PlayStation in 1999 and then to Nintendo’s Wii in 2007 and Wii U in 2014. In 2001, it had a movie made to cash in showing that no franchise is ever really dead. Or allowed to rest in peace.
Apparently, the game was inspired by Sweet Home and one can see the similarities: to wit, spooky stuff happens in a mansion where an artist once lived. While I cannot comment on the game, the movie is solid if unexceptional horror fare saved largely thanks to excellent set design/dressing.
The story concerns a video game artist named Nami (Megumi Okina). Upon receiving word that her estranged reclusive painter father has died and she has inherited his Western-style mansion, Nami embarks on a journey that doubles as a research trip for a horror game and a period of self-discovery as she looks for background on the family she has only known from a few memories of a little girl on a set of stairs in front of a scary portrait of a man. Travelling with the game’s director (and her ex-boyfriend), Kohei (Youichirou Saitou), she arrives at her dilapidated former home and finds it stuffed to the rafters with spooky paintings and macabre secrets that hint at her father being half-crazed and connected to disappearances of children in the area. When a storm traps Nami and Kohei in the building, a night of frights unfolds as the two are stalked by an unknown presence.
Adapted for the screen by director Ten Shimoyama (who seems like a bit of a journeyman director) and three other writers, including Takenori Sento (Shikoku) the film draws certain elements from its source insofar as it is a story of a couple stranded at a haunted mansion due to a storm. There are images ported over like mummified bodies and wheelchairs. There are also reams of dialogue and top-notch flashbacks – akin to Takashi Shimizu’s Reincarnation (2005) and Hideo Nakata’s Don’t Look Up (1996) – as Nami narrates her family history during her exploration of the house.
While the framing device of Nami’s exploration of a sordid family past initially promises that the story will be told from her perspective, her character doesn’t drive the action as viewer’s may expect. Similar to the game, it’s a bit of a two-hander between her and Kohei and their linear exploration through the house.
With this as the basis, the film is more about playing with our interpretation of events. Jarring editing, freeze frames and distorted images obfuscate whether the characters are in a game, making a game, or genuinely being hunted. It is handled in a tricksy way as the Nami and Kohei make use of video recording technology and friends at the gaming studio use art software to map out their movement to give an Etrian Odyssey cartographic effect, all of which we see visualised on screen.
Meanwhile, as the house offers up its secrets, Nami’s family history features twists that are sometimes implausible, sometimes horrifying, and onetime laugh-out-loud funny. This happens with the villain offering chuckle-inducing purple-prose melodramatic infodumps at the climax. Humour also comes from the other characters in the gaming studio offering acerbic support/commentary as they follow Nami and Kohei’s journey remotely from the studio – the house has good wifi/mobile phone coverage considering it’s in the middle of nowhere!
The switching in cameras and angles (B&W CCTV, shaky handheld, POV) builds in an air of uncertainty and suspense as to what is happening and whose perspective we are seeing the world through. On another level, it also allows the film to segue between perspectives and play with our interpretation of events. A nice touch with the use of CG is to create visual novel-esque UIs on the screen akin to the original game with text and character silhouettes. Thus, the horror game the characters are working on (and the viewer’s might be familiar with) bleeds into reality and vice versa as we wonder what is haunting/hunting Nami.
It does work on a meta-narrative level, regardless of if you have played/seen the game. It also allows the story to be ambiguous and shunt the narrative to various plot points and try alternate routes and endings. At points, however, the CG looks cheap and does have the capacity to take the viewer out of the experience when it gets overactive – the filming style reminded me of early 2000s horror TV show Freakylinks.
Also cheap are the horror cliches the film indulges in. Horror film cliché checklist:
Old mansion? Yes!
Thunder and lightening and spooky music? Ab-so-lootly!
Creepy dolls? Present!
Secret passages? Of course.
Splitting up? Yup.
A shower scene? Why not? This is a horror movie!
Maybe these are references to films like Psycho and House on Haunted Hill but that assumption might also be a bit of a stretch. That written, I appreciated the audacity of the Sleepaway Camp moment…
Where the film is pleasing is the physical art/set design and decoration.
The film features a small cast, a limited exterior location and interiors. The Western mansion that Nami and Kohei explore does have a creepy vibe due to its parlous state of creaky floorboards, rickety stair rails, dusty furniture, mildew-covered, soot-stained walls that are adorned with paintings that Francis Bacon at his most disturbed would have created. You feel dirty just being there and the lighting creates shadowy areas that add to the atmosphere of a spooky house and so while nothing is truly terrifying, it at least looks good.
Set your expectations low and this is still passable entertainment.