Bamy
(2017): Written and directed by Jun Tanaka. Starring:
Hironobu Yukinaga, Hiromi Nakazato, Misaki Tsuge, Toshi Yanagi, Yuki
Katsuragi. Running Time: 100 minutes.
Rating:
1/4 (if it really is a horror film)
It’s
been a week, and I still can’t decide if Bamy,
the feature-film debut of director Jun Tanaka, isn’t secretly a satire, a
point-by-point takedown of every tired cliché in the horror genre. If it is, then it just might be the most
brilliant thing ever, because I’ve never before seen a film use every trick in
the book to (try and) spook me, and yet somehow manage to provoke the exact
opposite reaction.
The
movie begins in an elevator, high, high over the Tokyo cityscape, as Fumiko
descends (from her job? No one seems to do actual work in this movie) to the
ground floor to head home, when she happens to encounter her old school friend,
Ryota. The movie blinks and it’s a year
later; they are now engaged and planning their wedding. How this happened- why they fell in love,
what exactly they see each other, and how Fumiko can stand Ryota’s endlessly stony-faced
non-presence- is the film’s greatest mystery, far beyond anything involving the
ghosts.
Ah
yes, I forget to mention, there are ghosts.
You see, Ryota has the ability to see those from The Beyond, and since they
apparently sense this via their ghost-radar (ghostdar, if you will), they
regularly show up and follow him around, every day, all the time, like a puppy
horde dressed in Goth drag. But not cute
puppies, more like pug puppies, the living proof that God certainly is capable
of making very grave mistakes. Their
presence, plus the fact that only Ryota and no one else can see them, makes his
daily life more and more of a hassle, until he finally starts to crack.
There
are the germs here, in this first part of the film, of a good ghost story. Portraying ghosts as more of a nuisance
rather than a threat is a fine idea for an alternative take on the genre, and
our first introductions to the ghosts and how they are filmed, often sliding into
the camera in parts of the shots that are deliberately shadowed and
out-of-focus, are genuinely good.
The
impressiveness of these moments, though, is pretty much the sole basis for my one
star, because they are constantly offset by how teeth-gnashingly aggravating
every scene involving the two main characters is. I can’t decide if it’s the writing, the
directing, or the actors themselves, but for a couple supposedly
head-over-heels enough to want to get married barely a year after meeting each
other, there is ZERO chemistry to be found anywhere between them. They barely even touch each other outside of a
few makeout sessions, which are so forced, loud, and awkward they’re borderline
unwatchable. Honestly, those parts were far
scarier than anything involving the ghosts.
Most
of these issues, I feel, stem from Ryota.
Fumiko is at least trying to
have a normal life and normal relationship, but Ryota is utterly devoid of
expression of any sort from start to finish; he mostly just stares off into the
middle-distance, whether or not a ghost is around. Not only did he apparently never think to
talk about his ghost problems with the “love of his life,” he also manages to
act completely shocked whenever people get offended when he forgets dates, breaks
things at work (seriously, HOW does this man hold down a job), ruins dinners,
and insists they can’t shop in certain bridal stores “just because.” Every scene- seriously, EVERY ONE- involving
the two of them trying to plan something or other for the wedding is trashed in
this way, and every one of them left me grabbing my head, staring at the
screen, wanting to scream “Fumiko, WHY ARE YOU WITH THIS DOUCHEBAG? And why did all the color suddenly wash out?”
This
was my mindset a little less than halfway through the film, but it’s at that
point where things take such a turn, and go to such unimaginable places, that I
suddenly achieved a sort of Zen State; clearly, OBVIOUSLY, this is not something
I should try to take seriously, or I would die.
All that was left to do was laugh.
And laugh I did, as the second half of Bamy treated me to an endless stream of moments so bizarre, so
random, so entirely without purpose or meaning, that they broke anything left
of the movie’s horror atmosphere. Some
of them were so unreal I’m not entirely sure I didn’t dream them; one particularly
moment involving a washing machine was so far beyond any kind of sense that I’m
still struggling to accept that I live in a world where it exists.
I
do not know how to properly convey this experience with words, but I shall
try. A short summary then; after
breaking down at work one day, Ryota chances on a young woman who, it turns
out, can also see ghosts, and is as frustrated by them as he is. Fortunately, Ryota has now discovered the
secret to making them go away; just bonk them on the head and hit them with a
cardboard box.
I
swear. I am not making this up. Much of the second-half consists of them
running around Tokyo (Ryota lasts about 10 hot seconds before he starts
cheating on his darling fiancé with his new Seance Flame), finding random ghosts,
and abusing them in truly cruel ways until they go away. At least, I THINK they’re ghosts; some of
them are too far away to tell, and I swear that one dude by the river was just
a regular pedestrian out for his morning jog.
Maybe there never were any ghosts, and these two are just sociopathic
assholes blighting the Japanese nation. And
if these ARE ghosts, and if this movie is in any way reflective of how living-dead
relations actually work, then Lord, let me ascend to the next plane as soon as
possible, because the living are dicks.
Bamy is one of those infamous,
you-have-to-see-this-to-believe-it movies that fail so hard at what (I think)
it wanted to achieve, it’s actually kind of amazing. It goes in one direction, and turns itself
around so hard by the end that it makes a 360-degree turn back to the start and
is more or less parodying itself by the time the contusion-inducing climax hits. It’s ultimately because of how far down its
own rabbit hole the movie goes that I still haven’t managed to convince myself
100% either way if this is a real, serious horror movie, or a satire so
straight-face it forgot how to blink. The
director of the film held a Q&A afterwards, but I didn’t want to be the one
person to stand up and ask, “So, this was a comedy, right?” only for the answer
to end up being, “Um, no. You asshole.”
And
I’m ok with not asking. Honestly, I
would rather this film’s true intent and purpose remain a mystery to me,
because any answer offered would never hold up to what I felt and thought
during the astounding, mystifying, confusing, and confounding experience that
is Bamy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to prep my
hammers by dipping them in holy water, just in case I need to fend off any
defenders of this movie who get in through the crawl space in my apartment and
stand on the landing, awkwardly pointing at me, mumbling something about my
umbrellas.
-Noah Franc
No comments:
Post a Comment