Introduction

Ever since the J-horror craze faded, Japanese horror has failed to attract a foreign audience. Did the quality suddenly drop? Did all the tricks that worked in the beginning become dysfunctional in scaring the spectator? Did Toei and other companies lose their confidence in horror movies as money-makers? To all these questions, one can answer yes.

Luckily, some directors, like Takashi Shimizu, continue to make horror movies. It is his perseverance and love for the genre that led to the haunted-village trilogy. In 2020, he released Howling Village (2020). One year later, he created Suicide Forest Village (2021). And, in 2022, he deliver his conclusion with Ox-Head Village.

Review

One night, during their occult livestream at the Tsubuno Onsen, a supernatural spot in the Hokuriku area, Akina (Rinka Otani) and Mizuki (Riko) push Shion (Koki), who is wearing an ox-mask, into the elevator that is, according to urban legends, connected to the other world. Yet, their prank goes horrible wrong.

Not long after that, Ren (Riku Hagiwara) shows a video of the live-stream to Kanon (Koki), the girl he harbours romantic feelings for, to confront her with the fact that Shion, the girl who disappeared as the elevator plunged down, looks exactly like her. As strange things start to happen around her, she decides to travel with Ren to the place where Shion was last seen, Tsubuno Onsen in Toyama prefecture.    

Ox-Head Village is a horror narrative that balances a sense of mystery and the ominous and unsettling breaches within the fabric of the ‘mundane’ in an effective way. In fact, the elegantly integrated ominous imagery serves both purposes. With such imagery, Shimizu does not only ensure that a certain uneasiness lingers within the spectator, but also introduces him/her to the structuring element of the narrative: the riddle of Kanon’s past. This riddle, introduced via a thoughtful constructed visual association, pulls the spectator into the narrative by feeding his thirst to know how Kanon’s past is connected to the figure of the Ox-head, the absence of her mother, and the existence of what seems to be a doppelgänger.

As certain pieces of the puzzle starts falling in place, the sense of mystery is kept lingering within the narrative by the repetition of a subtly unsettling signifier: yorishiro (i.e. an object capable of giving kami a physical space to occupy during Shinto ceremonies). It is, at least for the greater part of Ox-Head Village, an isolated signifier that wanders within the narrative space without being able to find another signifiers that would infuse it with sense. Yet, as the narrative passes its middle point, the sudden influx of folkloric narrative fragments, interconnecting rural preconceptions concerning twins and archaic religious practices, allows the spectator to approximate the signified of that wandering and in a certain sense cursed signifier.

The curse in Ox-Head Village functions in a very similar way as the curse that structures Ju-On, which was not surprisingly also the brainchild of Takashi Shimizu. The curse’s violent thirst is linked with the Other that is eager to remain blind. Its brutality is directed to those who glanced a sliver of the truth that structures the local community but fearfully cast away their eyes from it, hereby silencing the message the curse continues to write with its violence.  

Can we not, in a similar vein as we did in our review of Ju-On (2002) [to be published soon], argue that the curse aims to confront the societal Other with its complicity to the tragedy that befell a local community, a tragedy decorated with preconceptions and folkloric Shinto thought. If so, the curse is not vengeful for the sake of satisfying its thirst, but because it demands righteousness from the societal Other and wants its pain to be radically acknowledged.  

Anyone familiar with J-horror will realize that the composition of Ox-head Village offers a straight-forward horror affair – no attempt whatsoever is made to subvert the visual language of the genre. This kind of compositional familiarity (e.g. use of slow zoom-in movements, deliberate visual pace with sudden shifts, shaky movement, close-ups of (scared) facial expressions… etc.) is far from not bad. In fact, Shimizu proves, once again, that he has mastered the visual language of horror. Shimizu, furthermore, underlines his mastery by the fluid integration of unsettling imagery (e.g. an ox-head, …) into the visual flow and his ability to play with his spectators to make them feel ill at ease. 

The ominous element of the narrative is also echoed in the colour- and lightning design. By relying on slightly washed-out colours – something that is very reminiscent of the visuals that marked the nineties j-horror boom, he ensures that something sinister remains lingering within the narrative’s atmosphere. Shimizu, furthermore, does not overly rely on unnatural darkness and nocturnal scenes to deliver his kind of horror – he does not cheat cheaply. Rather, it is the thread of ominous visual signs that veins day- and night-time scenes and the subtle sinister musical accompaniment that decorates certain scenes that makes his style of horror functional and effective.

Ox-Head Village is a solid horror-movie that pleasantly utilizes a sense mystery to engage the spectator and fluidly integrated unsettling imagery to put the spectator ill at ease and even scare him/her. Takashi Shimizu’s latest might not try anything too different, but the experience he so thoughtfully crafted proves his mastery over the horror-genre and its visual grammar.   

Notes

Narra-note 1: Mr. Yamazaki (Satoru Matsuo), who is willing to drive them to the abandoned onsen, attempts to scare Ren and Kanon by telling them about The head of the Ox, the world’s most terrifying ghost story. Everyone who hears it, he underlines, dies. Yet, the actual goal of his joking is to confront our youth with the paradox that marks the scary story – death men tell no tales – and deflates the truthfulness of the murderous tale.