Kuime is a Japanese supernatural horror movie about an actor who is filming some kind of Samurai type looking movie thing. As far as I understood it he was the main character and his girlfriend was playing the lead female role. It becomes apparent very early on in the movie that the relationship between our two main characters is not a good one and after filming he's going off and fucking around with another member of the cast. It's from here that all the weird ghostly shit starts happening and stuff gets all kinds of crazy but if I try and outline any more of the plot I'm worried I might spoil something.
So last night I went to the cinema to see this movie and the majority of the film is spent watching the characters act out this traditional samurai drama thing and then a couple of scary things happen and the movie ends. When the credits started to roll and the lights in the theatre got brighter our initial reaction was "what the fuck was that?!" Not because the movie was bad but because we had absolutely no clue what had just happened on screen.
Nothing made any goddamn sense to us. Sure, it was a cool horror movie but it seemed like one of the most non-nonsensical movies ever with all these weird disconnected things happening between a movie production and a haunting. But then it clicked for one of us and after doing some research I realised that Kuime might just be one of the best horror movies I've ever seen in my goddamn life.
The movie production that is being filmed in the movie is for an old Japanese ghost story called Yotsuya Kaidan. Yotsuya Kaidan is a story from 1825 about betrayal, murder and ghostly revenge and once you understand that it's not just "some samurai drama" then all the strange shit going on in the movie makes a hell of a lot more sense. Some understanding of how Japanese ghosts work may also be required to fully "get" the film, but once you do and everything clicks you can truly appreciate it for just how great it is.
I do understand how that last paragraph makes me sound. It makes me sound like I'm saying "oooh, look at how much *I* understand about Japanese culture and stuff! fnar fnar fnar" which is not how I want to sound but if I try and go into more detail I'm going to spoil everything and I don't want that. You just need to see the damn thing first and then you'll understand what I'm getting at.
The only other problem with this film is the language. I'd say my Japanese is pretty good but a lot of the time people are talking in ye' olde Japanese which makes things a little hard to follow at times. Even the two native Japanese speakers I saw the movie with came out commenting on just how hard the language was so once again, I'm not trying to show off, shit is genuinely tough to understand.
It's kind of a shame though because I know that if any western critics get a hold of this movie they aren't going to like it. When people watch a movie they just want to relax and watch a fucking movie. They don't want to have to take a history lesson and a 1800s Japanese Language course just to enjoy a film. I just happen to be really into Japanese ghost stories and folk tales so looking all this stuff up and having the movie fall into place for me was an absolute joy.
Kuime is not for everyone but if you like Japanese supernatural horror movies and you're willing to clue yourself in a little bit then it's absolutely fantastic.
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