"Haunted House" is a Cult film, a surreal film. Like other surreal art forms, surreal films also seek to express the absurd and eerie effects of dreams.
Japanese directors are good at dreaming, such as Jin Min, such as Hayao Miyazaki. In terms of creating a dream atmosphere, Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of "Haunted House", has undoubtedly done a good job. Visually and audibly, this movie makes people believe that this is a summer dream.
Visually, the old house exuding a rotten and outdated atmosphere and the girl's carcass full of youthful vitality create a discordant beauty. The biting watermelon, the man-eating piano, the dancing skeleton, the cat with glowing eyes... These colorful, absurd and ambiguous images are collaged together by means of pop art expression, making the You never know what will come in the next moment. Those illogical scene transitions and weird and abnormal things all deepen the film's sense of dream.
Aurally, the film is played almost constantly with background music. In addition to the cicadas that represent summer, there are also crisp music from the music box and mysterious compositions played by the piano. You can hear moaning and groaning when the plot is soothing, and screaming and whining when the plot is tense. This undoubtedly strengthens the dreamlike psychedelic sense of the film from another sensory level.
The most criticized thing about this movie is that the plot is too simple and the behavior of the girls is illogical. However, when I regard this movie as a dream, I think this is precisely the highlight of "Haunted House". Just think, who's dream is not so illogical? Who else has a dream full of thoughtful and complex plots?
Director Nobuhiko Obayashi is undoubtedly a Dadaist who is diametrically opposed to all traditional artistic aesthetics. He admires Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, but he said that how to make a movie can make Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu feel very angry, so he does what he does, and everything has to go against these two great directors. Therefore, although "Haunted House" is ahead of its time in expression, it is in line with the spirit of the times at the artistic level. In that era when anti-rational and anti-art ideological trends prevailed, such works undoubtedly catered to the needs of the times.
The audience of Cult films is destined to be a minority, and accepting it requires richer artistic knowledge and "unique" artistic aesthetics. Therefore, "Haunted House" is destined to only become the love of a small group of people, and most people find it difficult to accept or even hate it. But this turbulent and bizarre dream is undoubtedly worthy of five stars.
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