Prequel to the feature “Onpaku”, “Occult” sheds some light to the case the latter revolves around, while being a rather accomplished film on itself.
The story revolves around Rina Kanemura, a magazine reporter and the previous owner of a notebook that appears as a key item in “Onpaku” One day, she receives a call from her mother saying that her brother Kazuya has not returned home for over a week. Although annoyed by her mother’s excessive worry, Rina receives a message from Kazuya himself saying “Help me.” To meet Kazuya, Rina heads to Shibuya, where he hands her the notebook. While there, however, she witnesses a man decapitating a crow and painting her car window with blood, while her brother also experiences something similar and soon runs away. It turns out that their viewings were part of their imagination, but when Rina askes her boss to publish the material on the notebook, he also exhibits erratic behavior and soon she finds herself hunted. Eventually, the connection of the events with an abandoned house that used to be a brothel and one of the prostitutes there, Chiyo, comes to the fore.
Check the full movie below
Despite essentially being a promo for “Onpaku”, “Occult” is actually a worthy film by itself. Shugo Fujii creates an atmosphere of tension, disorientation and horror from the beginning essentially, which never actually stops, carrying the movie till the end of its 16 minutes. The bloody sequences that is not clear if they are real or not, the attacks on Rina, and most of all, the presentation of the past arc, are all excellently portrayed, in a testament to Fujii’s effort as director, editor and DP. Regarding the last aspect, his trademark saturated visuals are excellent once more, in an overall work that is quite accomplished in technical terms also.
Jun Miyashita plays Rina convincingly, with the way her demeanor changes the more she gets into the case being the highlight of her performance. Takahiro Ochi as Kazuya highlights his panic and the way he loses his grip to reality with a very fitting excessiveness.
“Occult” is another testament in Fujii’s prowess in coming up with horror films, and a short I feel all fans of the category will appreciate.
