Japanuary Challenge 2025 - J-Horror 11\43

Despite the obvious genre elements, "Marebito" is much more of an inner odyssey through obsessions and anxieties rather than horror. Made in the early 00s', Shimizu's film boldly preludes the exploration of the digital era and its gaze in the modern cinema. His Masuoka documents a suicide at the metro station of a man stabbing himself in the eye. Watching again and again the filmed material, he comes to the conclusion that there was something so horrifying the man saw that it was better for him to die. Masouka's search for what it might have been leads him to encounter creations living underground of Tokyo's subway.

I might be over-analyzing "Marebito", but I found Shimizu's work fascinating. The combination of several types of videos and the topics of the digital era he brings up. How a person becomes obsessed with watching through the lens instead of his own eyes till he forgets himself drowning in his fears.