Jean Paul Sartre said “Hell is other people.” Stephen King said “Hell is repetition.” I say, “Hell is presumptuous crap that thinks it’s meaningful.”
Not that I’m outright condemning Marebito. Not outright, anyway. I’m just pointing out that there’s something about presumption that makes me want to punch people in the kidneys. And there’s something about Marebito that seems awfully presumptuous. Maybe it’s the way that nothing ever actually happens in the film. Maybe it’s the way the narrator speaks as though he’s grown wiser, when in fact he’s learned nothing. More likely, it’s the way that the film plods on tirelessly throughout its story, when there’s no real story to be told.
Okay, so there are things that happen. Like when the amateur videographer travels to the Mountains of Madness and then leaves without much inspection. Which pissed me off. If you’re going to name-drop Lovecraft’s greatest accomplishment, use it. Don’t make it window dressing. Especially when it’s dressing that covers the most boring vampire story I’ve ever seen.
And while we’re at it, can I ask another question? How is it that videographers, or artists, or writers, or any creative type in the movies always has enough money for the latest cell phones, televisions, Micro Machines, whatever, but they always reside in tiny one-room apartments with no carpeting? It could be a matter of priority. For example, this guy’s money must be going towards all his camera batteries, because I can’t recall a scene where he didn’t have his video camera with him.
But hey, let’s hit that vampire story up. Because this videographer travels to the bowels of the Japanese subterranean caverns and finds a mountainous crevasse. A completely new space in a film, never before seen, never examined. So what happens? He finds a naked woman, takes her home, and starts feeding her blood. We never see those caverns again.
I liked those caverns. They were fun and original. There was a bit of character in it. I could imagine a movie that’s all about a group of people heading further and further down until they reach Hell, or the center of the Earth, or maybe a Wal-Mart.
I didn’t like the vampire. She’s a lethargic and pathetic little goober who sits around and waits to be served. The man serves her because, best I can figure, he bets that’ll progress the movie along and end all this nonsense.
In all seriousness, he serves her because he wants to experience some kind of transcendant terror. If you recall, that was also the reason that Udo Kier stuck his intestines in a film projector in Cigarette Burns. If you would guess that the more interesting films of the two is indeed the one where intestines get stuck in a film projector, no cookies for you. That’s a given.
Instead, Marebito is content to draw out long silences and give us some pensive glances, while avoiding as many answers as possible. Wonder what those crawling greenish people are up to? Curious about how a helpless woman survived for so long on her own? And hey, why does the camera have grain and static towards the end? This story has plot holes you could squeeze a jet plane through.
I know that this film is trying to be poetic, and contemplative, and quiet. I get that. But I don’t get why the film has to be so goddamn boring about it all. Or why it seems like no one even bothered to make the characters compelling, or the situation even halfway believable. Those are the keys to involving an audience on more than a technical level. Movies like this are the ones I despise the most, because I know talented people were involved, but they were all too busy masturbating to the specter of their own brilliance.
