Many fans of the J-horror genre have fond memories of Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge (2002). Shimizu, in contrast to some of his contemporaries, did not venture to far from the horror-genre. Long after the J-horror boom fizzled out, he continued to deliver narratives that played safely within the boundaries established by the classics of the past. Sana is no different.

With Sana, Takashi Shimizu delivers a horror experience in the vein of the films produced during the J-horror boom in the nineties. Yet, is his harking back to certain well-trodden thematical paths a mere boring rehash or does he breathe some new life into the formula? 

Takashi Shimizu’s narrative commences when Asuka (Hana Amano), the AD of a popular radio program, and Hayato Komori (Komori Hayato), a radio personality and member of GENERATIONS, happen to discover a cassette tape in one of the boxes with unopened fan mail stored in a storage room.  During the live recording of his radio program, Komori Hayato receives a strange listener call – a concatenation of strange, disquieting sounds followed by a frail young female voice asking whether the cassette tape arrived.

After the recording has finished, he returns to the storage room. A whistling melody beckons him in; Hayato enters to greet the shape of Asuka cleaning, yet only discovers a cassette tape on the floor. Much to Hayato surprise, Asuka enters after him. They find out that the tape was sent by Sana Takaya thirty years ago as well as an accompanying letter expressing her dream of having her song played on the radio. Not much later, Hayato suddenly disappears. Private eye Gonda (Makita Sports), approached by Rin Kakuta (Akari Hayami) by the manager of the group, is given three days to conduct his investigation and solve his suspicious absence.  

Shimizu’s Sana seeks, like many horror films in the nineties, to blend mystery with horror, to utilize the frame of mystery to let horror blossom and threaten its boundaries. To establish such a frame, Shimizu has to introduce an element that inaugurates the frame of mystery. In the case of Sana, the cassette takes on this role. The cassette, as signalled through evocative visual and auditive means, is the kernel around which the frame of mystery is spun around, yet the frame only establishes itself for characters and audiences by way of an estranging contrast: the date the cassette was sent and the call asking about its arrival.

By way of the same narrative contrast, Shimizu alludes to the presence of the onryo. In our work dealing with the onryo, we have always emphasized that the most important thing of the onryo is the appeal she makes on the societal field, on the Other who has shortchanged her in some brutal way. However, while the discovery that the onryo’s violence constitutes a demand to the Other is a result of exploring the mystery, Takashi Shimizu opens his film by confronting the spectator with a seemingly innocent appeal from a female presence – listen to and play my song. However, by invoking the dimension of mystery via signifiers, imagery, and subtly ominous music, Shimizu signals that the signifiers that accompany the cassette merely establish an innocent decorative fiction that obfuscates her true demand (Narra-note 1). So, what does the onryo want? Or better, what blind spot in the Other does she target by holding others, as coincidental representatives of that failure, responsible (Structure-note 1)?

Within Sana, the onryo repeats its dangerous invitation by infesting the mind of others with her melody – the melody constitutes her ominous call to the Other to uncover what has been repressed, the traumatic truth in play. However, the subjective disruption caused by the way the onryo communicates – the melody that seeks to suck to listener into her world – obfuscates the very fact she is demanding the uncovering of her subjective truth. It is Gonda that, as the narrative enters its second half, surmises that Sana’s attack might be a call directed at the Other.

However, it is important to note that while Sana feels merely like a reformulation of what worked in the past, Shimizu does surprise the spectator by leaving the well-established narrative paths and delivers a twist to the truth of the onryo, offers a different interpretation of the well-established logic that the call of the onryo aims to unravel the presence of transgressive traumatic enjoyment underneath the fictional societal frame of harmony – the fiction of wa. Takashi Shimizu offers, in a certain sense, a more morbid approach to the Freudian death drive (Narra-note 2).      

 

Spectators who are familiar with the J-horror genre won’t find any surprises in the way Shimizu brought his narrative alive – he heavily relies on restrained dynamic movement to invoke a minimal quantum of uneasiness.

Throughout his narrative, Shimizu plays with diegetic sounds. It is evident from his composition that he perceives the diegetic sound-scape – whether marked by a sensible presence of silence or not – as a frail aural frame of mundanity that can be disturbed by any kind of aural infraction – sounds that are unexpected and louder (e.g. metal door opening). In the case where silence is sensible and the aural frame envelops the spectator, the soundscape pulls the absent spectator into the fragile atmosphere oozing from the filmic frame and gives any kind of infraction the power to short-circuit the spectator’s attempt to settle into a safe, pacifying place of comfiness.

Musical pieces are interwoven with diegetic sounds to single out important signifiers (e.g. the cassette, the signifiers minna no uta written on the cassette, certain revelations as Gonda interviews Reo Sano, Yuzuki (-) letting her father Gonda, who is all alone in his hotel room, know she hear the presence of a woman, … etc.) and allows the various enunciations fuel the sense of mystery that thrusts the narrative forward and sort their effect of unsettling the spectator.

The director combines his play with diegetic sounds to disturb the mundaneness of the atmosphere with the fluid interweaving of imagery that does not fit the mundane frame – imagery that rips the mundane open and offers spectators (and characters) a glance at the Otherworldly threat that is in play. The unseen and the unheard becomes momentarily perceptible, that what the societal field has repressed fleetingly rears its head – the demand insists. To give the mysterious atmosphere an even more ominous quality – the mundane has disintegrated – and increase the fearful anticipation of the spectator, Shimizu richly decorates the disruptive and disturbing images with threatening non-diegetic sounds.

The second half of the narrative, which increases the pace by which disturbing sounds and intrusive imagery concatenate, pulls the spectator fully into the ominous riddle of Sana and her humming song. Shimizu turns the threatening atmosphere into the film’s main character and it pays off – the spectator, relying on the members of GENERATIONS as little more than signs mirroring fear and anticipatory dread, can willingly subject himself to the way Shimizu manipulates the atmosphere, the way he breathes suspense and horror into the unfolding of the narrative and the effective delivery of his shocking finale (Acting-note 1).     

It comes to no surprise that Shimizu relies on subdued colour-schemes and a lingering darkness to bring his narrative spaces to live. In night-time sequences, lights are fighting not to erased by the oppressive darkness and, in day-time sequences, dark shadows succeed in retaining a prominent and even invasive presence within the narrative spaces.

Shimizu seeks to fictionally ground his narrative in external reality not by relying on documentary-like style of framing, but by littering his filmic space with actors who plays themselves. All members of the J-pop group GENERATIONS appear within the narrative: Alan Shirahama, Ryota Katayose, Ryuto Kazuhara, Hayato Komori, Reo Sano, Yuta Nakatsuka, and Mandy Sekiguchi.

While Shimizu, of course, seeks to utilize the appeal of the group as bait to get people to consume the film and happily lets his film become a vehicle to increase the group’s popularity – the film often shirks a bit too close to commercial video, the choice of letting them play themselves creates a fictional continuity between the filmic space and the space of the spectator, a continuity that has to potential to amplify the effect of horror on audiences (Psycho-note 1).

While we are sure the members of GENERATIONS tried their best to get into their fictionalized selves, some moments within their performances are merely serviceable at best. In some rare cases, spectators, who have not libidinal invested in the group or one of its members, will even see the fictional frame faltering for a fleeting moment.

With Sana, Takashi Shimizu delivers a pleasant horror experience – a film that can satisfy casual audiences and even please the hardened J-horror film. However, Shimizu cannot avoid his film from being held back from the fan-service it needs to deliver. Not only does the film ventures a little bit too often in the realm of the commercial video, but some members of the GENERATIONS lack the skill in making their moments to shine convincing.  

Notes

Narra-note 1: The dimension of the Onryo’s demand is corroborated when the call between Ryota Katayose and Hayato Komori is disturbed by the sudden bursting forth of a female voice: “Listen, please”.

Structure-note 1: The evocative imagery featured within the title-sequence gives the spectator a subtle yet ultimately deceptive indication. Shimizu thoughtfully exploits this visually induced indication to toys with the spectator.   

Narra-note 2: The shocking yet evocative finale allows us to sew all the element together and expose the logic of Sana, as onryo. While the onryo seeks to realize a radical symbolic inscription for the traumatic real, Sana calls for love. Yet, can a simple act of love pacify Sana?   

One can even argue that Shimizu, with Sana, shows that a radical lack of love lays at the basis of traumatic excesses; the absence of love thrusts the subject into the realm of the deathly – a morbid exploration of love and loss. 

Psycho-note 1: The spectator must let himself be duped, must allow himself to accept this continuity, in full knowledge that such continuity does not and cannot exist. Fans of GENERATIONS might, due to their pre-existing libidinal investment in some of the members, be more willing to accept this deceptive continuity for the duration of the film.

Acting-note 1: Tsugutoshi Gonda, performed by Makita Sports, and Rin Kakuta, played by Akari Hayama, do not merely function as signs supporting the arousal of fear in the spectator, but also as buoys to guide him through the oppressive fear that defines the film’s atmosphere in the latter half.