Sayuri サユリ (2024) Director: Koji Shiraishi [Chicago Japanese Film Collective 2024] (2025)

House of Sayuri

サユリ 「Sayuri」

Release Date:August23rd, 2024

Duration:108mins.

Director:Koji Shiraishi

Writer:Mari Asato, Koji Shiraishi(Screenplay),Rensuke Oshikiri(Original Manga),

Starring:Ryoka Minamide, Toshie Negishi, Kitaro, Hana Kondo, Zen Kajihara, Fusako Urabe, Kokoro Morita, Kitaro, Rei Inomata, Ryu Ikeda,

WebsiteTwitter:@sayurimovie2024IMDB

I found 2024 was shaping up to be a quiet year for horror as much vaunted titles didn’t grip my imagination and then, around Japan’s Obon season when spirits come to the mortal plane, came Sayuri, found-footage (Noroi) / ero-guro (Carved – The Slit-Mouthed Woman) horror maestro Koji Shiraishi’s adaptation of a manga.

Working with fellow horror auteur Mari Asato (Bilocation, Ju-On: The Old Lady in White), the two adapt a work by Rensuke Oshikiri that uses the haunted house formula.

Experiencing the scares are the seven members of the Kamiki family who have just moved into their dream home, a three-storey building in the leafy, hilly suburbs of Ito City, Shizuoka Prefecture. Three generations live under the same roof and they love each other so it’s a shame that their dream home is a haunted house with a horrible history.

The chills begin when the daughter of the family is repeatedly possessed and attacks the youngest son. People soon start dying off one by one due to a malicious spirit named Sayuri, which manifests itself as an obese teen and a little girl. Sayuri’s supernatural shenanigans slowly escalate from possession to sliding in and out of shadows and assaulting people with a crowbar and it isn’t long before people start dying.

And that is all I will say about plot because, like the 2022 word-of-mouth hit Barbarian, going into this blind will net viewers the maximum effect (even the trailer gives too much away) but if you want to know a bit more (and I’ll only reveal a bit), keep reading.

Since it does play with J-horror tropes, there are things that can be explored.

Shiraishi shows why he is a master of the genre by utilising rote J-Horror techniques to make alien a familiar space and tease the viewer’s anticipation and fear with the ghost’s presence. Spine tingling sequences involve TV screens glitching and lights blinking on and off. There are audio cues of Sayuri’s creepy laughter to make hair stand up on end and the lighting which, when off, plunges the environment into pitch black so we expect the titular terror to loom out unexpectedly – and in one squirm inducing sequence, she does, towards us in a low-angle shot, her size building and building the closer she gets.

Whoever found that house deserves praise because the stairway at the centre of it is an eye-catching and useful set since it is built with a wide shaft in the centre that seems to run from roof to ground level. At different points it becomes a gauntlet for people to ascend/descend and that shaft a pit for people to plunge down if they are not being killed by regular household implements. The bluntness of their deaths is gasp-inducing for its realism and the occasional grotesque sight of vomit and broken limbs makes the stomach churn.

Cinematographer Maki Ito (Offbeat Cops, Love and Other Cults) delivers a nice-looking film, really clean and pristine where the night-time terrors are clearly defined and not muddy or dull. She also delivers some gorgeous sunsets towards the end.

Story-wise, the fact that Sayuri features the sacred space of a home corrupted by broken family ties makes it a close analogue to Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On is the closest analogue and Sayuri even features similar time slips that reveal the origins of the hauntings although there are nods to Hideo Nakata’s Don’t Look Up, Ring, and Dark Water in narrative turns.

So, while there’s nothing strikingly new to Sayuri as it plays out every J-Horror scare going, it is effectively made. A change happens in the second half when the film comes down to eldest son Norio (Ryoka Minamide) and senile grandmother Harue (Toshie Negishi), two tai chi practitioners. Just as Norio is about to be claimed by the ghost, Harue, snaps out of her dementia, regains her senses, and steps in to defend her kin and the film changes tonally to reconfigure the familiar into the fantastically absurd.

To be blunt, it becomes a battle for supremacy – akin to a battle manga, one might say – to keep control of the haunted house. Shiraishi commits to the rivalry between the living and the dead with gusto and toys with J-Horror formulas as violence meets scares and laughter from the absurdity ensues. This tonal change could be sensed in the first half of the film with the breakneck speed of deaths, the music that feels overdone, and the characters who are cheery in a cartoon-like manner but the extent of how far the film goes took my breath away due to surprise at times and often left me laughing. The cherry on top has to be Toshie Negishi whose performance is an unexpected treat of scenery chewing.

Also told with the same sincerity is the inciting incident of the horror, thus humanising the monster and giving it a genuine element of tragedy once all is revealed by that aforementioned time slip. A bit of a bait and switch is pulled as that obese ghost we may have recoiled from at the start is humanised in a way that is just the right side of cynical.