Sweet Home

While most people are probably familiar with the Capcom zombie-horror video game franchise, Resident Evil, they might not know what inspired it, that being the 1989 NES role-playing game also released by Capcom, Sweet Home. While it was never released outside of Japan due to its extremely gruesome imagery and role-playing games not being very popular in the west (at the time), the game was well received for its time and was made in tandem with a film that shared the same title. Even though the game was better received and Resident Evil has fully eclipsed its inspiration, this little Japanese-language supernatural romp is still worth searching out.

A small film crew plan to film within the old, abandoned mansion of famous artist, Ichirō Mamiya, in the hopes that they can find several precious frescos left untouched in the abode, document their plans to restore them, and publish their findings in a documentary they’re creating. This crew consists of director, Kazuo Hoshino (played by Shingo Yamashiro), his pre-teen daughter, Emi (played by Nobuko Yamada, aka Nokko), the film’s photographer, Ryō Taguchi (played by Ichiro Furutachi), reporter and professional art restorer, Asuka (played Fukumi Kuroda), and the film’s producer, Akiko Hayakawa (played by Nobuko Miyamoto), but after they managed to gain access into the building despite being denied by the townsfolk, strange unexplainable occurrences start to happen around them, which leads to some of the crew being killed off. Learning from a local gas station attendant named Kenichi Yamamura (played by the film’s main producer, Jûzô Itami) that the house is haunted by the spirit of Mamiya’s wife, Lady Mamiya, who years ago lost her child during a freak accident and kidnapped and murdered several children in order to give her deceased child some companionship, and has now chosen Emi as her next offering, forcing the remaining survivors to confront this vengeance spirit in order to spare Emi and escape with their lives.

Sweet Home doesn’t contain the same levels of bombastic theatricality or recognizable characters as Resident Evil, but the similarities are clear in certain sections of this wild, but otherwise very enjoyable spook fest. Even if the characters aren’t remarkable and it maybe could’ve used a little more heft to its narrative to really sell its fun yet brief plotline, the engaged performances, fun creepy atmosphere, really eye-catching effects and imagery, and a strong guiding hand in the directing chair, make this piece of unknown media worth scouring.

The person truly responsible for how this movie turned out isn’t as obvious as the credit list would have you believe, as while it would be easy to expect that the film’s genuinely effective suspense-building and atmospheric presentation is due to being directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (a very highly regarded Japanese horror director known for his psychological thrillers and for creating the very well received 1997 neo-noir, Cure), this movie may owe a lot of its style, personality and punch to producer, Jûzô Itami, as he somewhat took command of the film after a specific point in time. While Kurosawa did direct the film and had his version released in theatres during its initial run, Itami re-shoot and re-edited parts of the film for its home video and TV release, which infuriated Kurosawa to such an extent that he sued Itami and his production company (something unprecedented in the Japanese film industry at the time). Kurosawa would go on to lose the lawsuit and since the theatrical version remains unavailable to this day, Itami’s recut is the movie people would’ve seen going forward, but this isn’t all bad news. While the morality of taking over a picture you mainly just produced after it was released is questionable, Itami’s more comedically-driven filmmaking style brings a playful energy to this typical ghost story, which in turn makes it a lot more fun and memorable.

While a more gritty and psychological picture could’ve been interesting and the script (also written by Kurosawa) has all the right pieces to make it tragic and haunting with a straightforward but chilling backstory of this mansion and the ghost that resides within, it’s also a fairly simple story with pretty standard characters and a relatively expected layout, so unless more depth was added, it’s possible the film could’ve grown dull after a while. However, thanks to the more sparkly and cheesy nature of the presentation, it manages a fun sense of spookiness that’s indicative of a Halloween haunted house attraction; not necessarily being scary but can still get the adrenaline pumping thanks to effective ambience and arguably provides a more wholesomely scary experience. It’s balanced even better by the film never veering too heavy into being comedic, as it still has genuinely strong build-up to some scares, is visually presented in a dark fashion, and while the story and characters are fairly basic, they work within this set up and never feel too self-aware to lose investment, so it feels like both Itami and Kurosawa both got to put some of their filmmaking styles into this feature (complicated aftermath aside).

Horror movies rarely produce extremely deep characters, but there’s always the chance extra effort could be included, especially if the scenario ties into a struggle one of them is grappling with. Considering one of the early critical responses compared this and its story to that of the 1963 Robert Wise supernatural horror film, The Haunting (an extremely well-made psychological thriller with very complex and interesting characters), you’d be forgiven for thinking there could be hope for some of these leads, but it turns out they are annoyingly cliched. With five members to the crew, few to any of them feel like defined characters and only exist to either be killed off or act out a very traditional route in the plot, but what makes some of this tolerable is that the performances are good enough that it allows them to stand out even within their blanket personalities. Even some of the minor roles like Itami as the character of Mr. Yamamura (he really did want to insert himself everywhere in this picture) are portrayed with a believable sense of grit, and Fukumi Kuroda has some fantastically creepy facial expressions (with some of her early moments of possession being pretty unsettling), but aside from that, there’s not a lot to talk about with these characters.

Despite being the main character and the one who’s position as the leading heroine, Akiko is a pretty perfunctory character with nothing really to work with (except for the frustratingly common trope of seemingly forcing a working woman into a domestic role in order to quell an evil threat). She is performed well by Nobuko Miyamoto (the wife of Jûzô Itami, which just adds another way he inserted his control over the picture) but by the standards of being a ‘’final girl’’, she doesn’t do that much in the film or offer much to the overall story, coming across as the safest and therefore, most obvious pick for the final survivor rather than for any meaningful reason. The only one who has a fraction of development to work with would be Mr. Hoshino, as he ponders whether to go out with Akiko after the passing of his wife, and is forced to ‘’man up’’ in order to save his daughter from being overtaken by the spirit, but nothing ever comes of this and he’s written out of the last act despite seemingly intending for him to have importance, so he just petters out very unceremoniously. Emi is not an annoying character and does ironically serve more purpose as a hostage than she did in the rest of the film, but she therefore also has very little to work with. While the major antagonist is barely shown until the end (with an incredible impressive effect and puppet), she does at least leave a striking image, and her backstory is notably disturbing and painful.

As to be expected of a ghost story, ambience is key to making a unforgettable experience, and even with this film’s clear low budget and seemingly constraint filming style, it does manage to use every component in a unique and effective way to result in a pretty entertaining and memorable viewing. While it can be a little hard to make out this mansion due to the cramped camera work by Yonezo Maeda mixed with the constantly switching aspect ratio, the place feels like a legitimately dilapidated gothic setting with appropriately ambient shadow work and set decoration. Even if this sense of destruction means it doesn’t have a very ornate look (aside from the paintings that drew the film crew to the house in the first place), the movie knows how to use this environment in a sense that can still allow for some fun creepy imagery. The musical score by Masaya Matsuura is very over-the-top in its sound and instrumentation, adopting a very bouncy and even silly mentality during the calmer sequences which could almost feel a little demeaning, but the faster-paced and hectic sound that comes during any moment of peril (while never feeling scary) heightens the mood and engagement in a pretty effective way.

As to be expected of a smaller, independent horror film with a ghoulish edge, the movie has a lot of effects work to spotlight some of its more supernatural occurrences, but it’s nice to see that these effects are extremely well done. Despite there only being a few instances of them being showcased, the make-up, prosthetics and puppet-work feels very high-calibre, and even when obscured by the camera quality and framing, still comes across as highly detailed, full of effort and hard to forget. This is explained by the fact that they managed to get effects artist, Dick Smith (the man responsible for winning an Oscar for Bets Make-Up for Amadeus as well as working on other films such as The Godfather, Scanners and The Exorcist) to work on their project, which went a long way to providing some glorious kills and creatures. The scarcity of these effects is a bit of a shame, but when they do show up, they are very eye-catching and show the strengths of a clearly talented artist.

While Resident Evil was the one to become a worldwide hit and Sweet Home remained as a small nugget of history that not many  know about, it’s nice that it can stand as a solid, even genuinely great game for its time that inspired something so prolific and long-lasting, and the movie (while even more obscure) can also be placed in this camp. It doesn’t provide the most unique experience, story or characters, but its effectiveness at handling these tropes and providing something fun, explosive and gooey in all the right places, makes it an elusive picture that is warranting of a watching on a Halloween night where you don’t want to scream, but become engrossed in something spooky. There are stronger ghost stories out there, but this one still deserves to be mentioned around the campfire.