Editorials
Haunted by Guilt in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Retribution’ [Horrors Elsewhere]
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
The genre output of Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best characterized by atmosphere, ambiguity, and most of all, a perpetual sense of dread. His 2006 movie Retribution — or Sakebi, which translates to “scream” — tenders the same qualities of personal benchmarks as well as rethinks conventions of all contemporary Japanese horror. Retribution revolves around a spate of bizarre murders and the troubled detective investigating them, so Kurosawa enthusiasts immediately think of Cure as they watch this slow burn unfold. The presence of a supernatural element evokes unavoidable comparisons to Pulse and the likes of Hideo Nakata’s Ring, but Kurosawa’s maverick sensibilities still shine through even as he walks down a familiar road.
This film opens on a murder in progress; a woman in a red dress is drowned by an unknown man at a Tokyo waterfront. As the police converge on the site later, Detective Noboru Yoshioka (Kōji Yakusho) is alarmed to find his missing coat button near the victim’s body. Another seed of doubt is planted once Yoshioka’s fingerprints match those found at the crime scene. Aggravating his coiling uncertainties is now the ghost of the woman in red (Riona Hazuki), stalking Yoshioka and accusing him of her murder.
Around the same time, a doctor (Ikuji Nakamura) kills his delinquent son out of fear he will become a burden on society; a woman (Kaoru Okunuki) drowns her lover after he leaves his wife and threatens her own selfhood. The first crime touches on a cultural belief in Japan where the group’s needs take precedence over individuality. The second shows the extremes someone will go to to maintain their autonomy and avoid routines like marriage. In either situation, someone’s disruptive existence jeopardizes the other’s harmony. These two additional murders, both distinguished by a similar M.O. and the fact that each victim died after committing minor indiscretions, are evidence of a growing social illness in the area. However, the assailants are not responsible for the woman in red’s death either. As with Pulse and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On series, the supernatural mythology of Retribution is supported by events parallel to the main story.
The father and mistress are incontrovertibly guilty of killing their loved ones, whereas Yoshioka is purported to be innocent. He denies the shrieking ghost’s repeated accusations before and after her death is settled, and up until a pair of gobsmacking twists, audiences believe him. What they suspected all along is off the mark, though. Wrapping the initial mystery up so early may baffle viewers, but Kurosawa is not revealing his cards too early. On the contrary, he is setting up an entirely new game.
Under the cover of twilight and in view of distant traffic, the film’s jane doe expires in a shallow puddle of saltwater. Her violent death echoes the births of other cinematic onryō, or wrathful spirits, that wreak havoc on the living. While the blame evidently lies elsewhere, the spectre coming to Yoshioka is not a case of mistaken identity. The woman in red haunts him and others for a specific reason; her piercing, aghast scream is a rallying cry for those like her. The lithe and unearthly phantom is thereupon a manifestation of both guilty consciences and willful ignorance.
The people caught up in other supernatural daisy chains are often free of any wrongdoing; their involvement is mere happenstance. Innocence notwithstanding, the onus is on them to set things right and put literal spirits to rest. Retribution amends the routine to better fit its knotty story. Everyone visited by the crimson apparition is culpable for something, whether it be a crime they directly committed, or a moral infraction they had no idea they were at fault for — sometimes both. And unlike other films in the genre, there is no perceptible remedy or escape.
Apart from Yoshioka who is really only looking to clear his own name, the police are apathetic toward the original victim, or “F-18” as she is dubbed in the meantime. The cops put a good amount of emotional distance between F-18 and themselves, and as a result, she is seen more as a task to complete than a push for justice. Their indifference, albeit for different reasons, ties into what summons the foreboding spirit. Using the woman in red as his instrument, Kurosawa criticizes those who turn away from someone else’s personal horror. Of course, it is inconceivable to be completely aware of everyone’s pain, but to a ghost driven by her worst moments and utter agony, logic is moot. Instead, she copes by pursuing anyone who disregarded her upon sight.
Other filmmakers would rather resolve everything as neatly as possible when telling a ghost story, but Kurosawa stays true to form and offers little, if any tangible closure. Additional questions would have inevitably come up had the director included the alternate ending. In its current form, though, the movie is a probing study of the human mind’s darkest corners. The writing is intellectual; conversations dig deep and expose subtext without sacrificing art. So much of the film’s aesthetic says more about the characters and themes than words could. From the emphasis on Tokyo’s drab industrial spaces as opposed to the city’s more attractive sights, to the general instability of physical structures and interpersonal relationships, Kurosawa leaves no stone unturned when exercising his exploration of social troubles, psychological unrest, and crushing guilt.
At first, Retribution comes across as Kiyoshi Kurosawa haunting his own opus. He pinches ingredients from his most renowned films; the frustrated detective on the trail of a killer, and the unfathomable spirits invading the human world. As the last act demonstrates, the movie is more profound and unsettling than its basic pitch ever lets on.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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