One could argue that, within Japanese cinema, there are two different approaches to the horror genre. Either one turns to the genre to make easily digestible experiences that follow the tropes of the genre or one tries to revitalize the genre by colouring outside the lines and produce something fresh.
However, there are also experience that deliver a bit of both, experiences that try to be easy digestible and offer something fresh. Eiichiro Hasumi’s Re/member (2022) delivered such filmic experience by offering a blend of romance, time-looping, and slasher-horror. Yet, in the case of Re/Member: The Last Night, the attempt to deepen the plot, harkening back to certain tropes of the genre, threatens to endanger what made the first film so enjoyable.
The narrative commences the day after the events of the first film, after bringing the deadly game of Body Search successfully to completion. Takahiro (Gordon Maeda), picking up the pin he gave Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto) during the game, regains his memory of that horrifying event. Yet, his happy reunion with Asuka takes a strange turn as she suddenly, in front of him, evaporates. Asuka soon realizes that she has become the next cut-up body and bloodthirsty adversary in the Body Search.
Three years later, on a school trip to an amusement park, Rikuto (Kaito Sakurai) and his friend Yamato (Fuku Suzuko) happens to see a little girl wandering off in a restricted area – they follow her, not knowing her presence ominously signals the coming start of the deadly Body Search game. Rikuto, Yamoto, Misaki (Seiri Anzai), Arisa (Marin Honda), and Wataru (Takeaki Yoshida), finding themselves stuck with a nightly version of the amusement park, are tasked to abide by the little girl’s demand to solve the puzzle of her cut-up body.
The opening-sequence of Re/Member: The Last Night – the short sequence before the recap of the previous narrative – has but one purpose: to arouse a sense of uneasiness and mystery in the spectator. He is thrown – without any narrative elements to hold on to – into a ritual event full of humps of meat-like towers and jugs of blood and is thus invited by Hasumi to utilize the evoked riddle of how this ritual relates to the events of both films to invest into the narrative.
While the opening succeeds in enticing the spectator, the success or failure of Re/Member: The Last Night depends on how well Hasumi can sell the answer to this riddle with his narrative. As Hasumi cannot put all his cards on the table from the get-go, he seeks to keep the sense of mystery lingering by contrasting two seemingly unrelated spatial moments – scenes of the amusement park are disturbed by imagery of an ominous man entering an abandoned dump. And, not much later, a similar manly black-shape disturb the space of amusement park with his presence (Narra-note 1, Narra-note 2).
A second mysterious presence who is introduced to carry the sense of mystery within the narrative is the nearly completely petrified female shape in the ‘Land Of The Dead’. Who is she and how does she relate to the ritual and the beginning of the deadly game? Misaki’s intrusive recollections pertaining the ritual also arouses the spectator’s interest – is she, in any way, connected to the ritualistic birth of the game?
However, as the narrative unfolds, some fragments delving into the ritualistic truth – exploring the cause of the Body Search, what perpetuates it, and how its chain-like nature can be broken – often borders on the ridiculousness. It is not that what is revealed is absurd, but the way in which Hasumi delivers these moments have a dramatic quality that ends up working counterproductive. The lack of subtlety causes certain twists to miss their effect – the spectator guesses certain revelations too quickly, deflating not only the dramatic build-up, but also the impact of certain reveals.
Yet, that is not all, some dramatic events are so coincidental and certain acts of characters unthoughtful – their utter blindness – that the spectator not only struggles to accept the emotionality that sustains these moments but also that his ability to suspend his disbelief is put into jeopardy. In other cases, the forced sense of drama ends up puncturing the tensive atmosphere, exposing the tricks (i.e. the glowing red stone, the weighty female voice, the lightning, … etc.) aimed at arousing a sense of uneasiness. In other words, spectators, especially those well-acquainted with the horror genre, will surely roll their eyes a few times.
We would, in fact, refrain the spectator from granting deeper thoughts to the revelations pertaining the curse as such critical glance will uncover a tangle of unrhymable narrative elements. However, some of these elements are purposefully left indeterminate – certain mysteries are left unsolved – to arouse interest in a third instalment. The end-credits all but affirms such intent. Yet, whether the spectator feel excited by these mysterious remainders or not solely depends on his ability to overcome his reflex to be critical and enjoy this high-school romance-slasher merely at face-value.
The composition of Re/Member: The Last Night is full of dynamism – from subtle camera movement, fluid camera movement, to rough shaky dynamism. Hasumi always ensures that a quantum of dynamism remains present within his composition not only to give his visual fabric a certain sense of fluidity, but also to facilitate shifts of compositional pace – from fluid tensive calmness to crude bloody terror – and fluidity interweave visual horror tropes (e.g. slow zoom-in dynamism, … etc.)
Due to Hasumi’s reliance on dynamism throughout the narrative, he succeeds in utilizing static moments not merely as establishing shots and moments of pause to frame conversations, but also as punctuating interventions – a sudden stop of camera movement to put emphasis on facial expressions (fearful and so on) or to confront the spectator with horror-imagery.
Hasumi, however, also finds opportunities within his narrative to add some visual decorations. In the sequence that opens the film, for instance, the director turns to visual ‘artefacts’ to decorate the cuts and accentuate the visual flow and colour-manipulations to accentuate the presence of meat. The most fun Hasumi has within his composition is around the middle of his narrative, where he goes all out with a creative marriage between imagery of finding bodily pieces and getting killed and upbeat musical accompaniment – no horror, but fun nonetheless.
To create tension within Re/Member: The Last Night, Hasumi does not rely on compositional tools, but on threatening musical accompaniment and dramatic sound-decorations. This choice allows Hasumi to firmly control the flow of tension and keep his narrative accessible for the wider public, for the spectator who can appreciate the occasional fright, but does not seek to bathe himself in a draining atmosphere of dread. However, at the same time, the reliance on music also forces a sense of tension upon the spectator – a manipulative trick that J-horror fans won’t be able to appreciate that much.
Re/Member: The last Night is a fun romp if one takes everything at face-value. Think deeper and you’ll encounter a mess of improbabilities, inconsistences, and not-well disguised plot-devices. This film is, truth must be said, not made for the seasoned J-horror fan, but for high-schoolers who can, by virtue of inhabiting the same space of seishun as the protagonists, more easily breathe life into the emotional flow of this bloody narrative.
Notes
Narra-note 1: The girl that wanders off in a restricted area does not heighten the dimension of mystery because the few associations the narrative generates allows the spectator to connect her to Asuka, as an eight-year-old, and to deadly game of Body Search that centres around her.
Narra-note 2: If the spectator thinks well – utilizing the characters that have been introduced, he can already surmise who the mysterious dark-cladded figure must be.
Hasumi does not wait long to confirm the spectators’ suspicion and, subsequently, reveals him as an ally who seeks to break the curse that manipulates time to concatenate victims as surrogates and perpetuate the body search game.
Narra-note 3: One thing that will bother spectators is the fact that none of the high-schoolers questions thedark-cladded man’s sudden decision to dedicate himself to the Body Search, despite having sabotaged them to prevent a new surrogate from being chosen – a fact all high-schoolers are conscious off.