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Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi; starring Hideyuki Kobayshi. Released to DVD on June 7, 2005. In the 1980’s, Chucky made dolls scary again. No longer were Cabbage Patch kids viewed as innocent, smiling playmates. Children couldn’t sleep at night unless they pulled the covers over their heads, because the dolls’ eyes were always watching and waiting to make their move. Marronnier is a film that taps into this long standing fear in a new and clever way. This is a cute horror movie, with dolls as its stars. The main character is a young woman named Marino who has a collection of dolls that just happen to have been made by Iwata, a murderous doll maker. She calls her favorite doll by the name of Marronnier. Iwata’s assistant, Numai, kills women and dips them into a machine that turns their bodies into wax, and then Iwata makes dolls out of the now waxen dead women. The actors scream, faint, and pull their hair, and that is all the acting the film requires of them. Besides, most of the actors aren’t really actors; they’re Manga writers who decided to help out on screen. This is not a horror movie with good acting at its core; if that’s what you’re looking for, go track down 28 Days Later. I found this brilliant little film creepy, gross and hilarious. You’ve got a girl getting her hand and head cut off with razor wire, a man getting his knee caps and face bashed in, a bloody toothbrush scene, a woman getting string sewed into her hand, and lots of scenes of Japanese school girls, wedding dresses, and blood. There are also the predictable situations that had me yelling directions at the girls to look behind them, or to run and hide. Marronnier is a film that reminds me of Sam Raimi’s early films, which isn’t coincidental — director Hideyuki Kobayashi lists the Evil Dead 2 as one of his favorite American movies. And Marronnier is the type of campy, over-the-top horror that would make Raimi proud. The film was written, directed, edited, and photographed by Kobayashi. He also designed all 20 of the dolls, helped with the music, and acted in the film. The film was produced by Junji Ito, who is also a well-known Manga comic book artist. The addition of the experienced Ito certainly helped the movie, as he has already adapted two of his comics, Tomie and Uzumaki, into movies. This entertaining low-budget film is poorly edited, so it’s difficult to distinguish where the dream sequences end and reality begins, yet still, this movie accomplishes everything Kobayashi had hoped for. Many of the scenes seem to be shot with a camcorder, and there are moments when the film appears to be grainy and jumps around, but the filming style succeeds at luring you into the dark, lurid atmosphere where the Marronnier’s action takes place. Marronnier set out to make viewers cringe and laugh at precisely the same time and succeeds grandly. It’s doubtful that Marronnier is ever going to get the kind of viewing that movies like The Ring and The Grudge get, but it doesn’t take itself as seriously as those two films do either, which in my eyes, makes this film a lot more fun to watch..
Jen Mashuga yes, it's true: "Manga" is a common Japanese translation for the word "comics". |
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