Marebito

Shot in just eight days on cheap camera equipment by Takashi Shimizu (who directed the cult J-Horror hit 'Ju-On', and its subsequent Hollywood adaptation 'The Grudge'), this dark little number from Tartan Asia Extreme has a lot to recommend it, with a plot that tips its hat at everything from Dante's 'Inferno', to 'Videodrome', to 'Little Shop of Horrors'.

Cameraman Masuoka is a loner obsessed with the idea of filming the emotion of fear. One day he finds himself at the scene of the suicide of a homeless man in a Tokyo subway. His obsession deepens - abandoning his Prozac and armed only with a camera, he descends into the murky world beneath the Tokyo subways, to do existential battle with the denizens of the underworld.

The hollow-earth theory concerning the city of Agartha, the aforementioned 'Inferno' parallels, and a shaky, documentary-style reminiscent of 'The Blair Witch Project' combine to create an atmosphere of creeping terror. Shinya Tsukamoto, director of cult body-horror hit 'Tetsuo' gives a stern, blank-faced performance - perfect for a narrator as unreliable as Masuoka.

Masuoka attempts to care for the mysterious F, a girl he has found in the netherworld. Shimizu and writer Chaki Konaka pay homage to Werner Herzog's classic 'The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser' (in their own, freaky, J-Horror way), and as Masuoka is drawn deeper down into madness, darkness and violence, Shimizu creates a subtly nuanced atmosphere of supernatural terror amongst the blandness of suburban Tokyo.

Thoroughly enjoyable as a companion piece to Shimizu's earlier work, 'Marebito' is literate, disturbing, and convincing in its own paranoiac way. It lacks the clarity of 'Ju-On', but even as a demonstration of what can be achieved with no budget, no time, and cheap equipment, this is worth a look.