QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM SAN SEBASTIAN
The fate of several people across various parts of Japan – Yokohama, Chiba, Kobe, etc – is similarly tragic: either they are victim to a horrific accident or they commit suicide. At least that’s what it looks like for perplexed investigator Domoto (Anne Nakamura), who sincerely hopes that these strange deaths are not connected. A very trivial detail, however, suggests otherwise. Could this be the workings of a serial killer, or just the inevitable consequence of the natural disaster that is life on earth, Yutaro Seki and Yutaro Seki’s film repeatedly asks its viewers.
This highly fragmented story – pulverised even – is unevenly broken down amongst the numerous characters (or victims, if you prefer) over a duration of 128 minutes. The directors save the most gruesome bits for the second half, focusing on the emotional journey of each character in the first hour. If you don’t become a casualty of boredom in the first part, you’re in for a far more exciting ride in the second one. A young man wants to drive again, but law enforcement prevents him from doing so after he crushed the head of a male while drunk driving (how he evaded prison is for you to guess, as many other elements of the plot). A high school student lacks confidence in her work, while her devoted teacher insists that she should forge ahead – to the point of attending her house in order to help with her homework. A shopping mall cleaner has a meltdown after accidentally spilling the soapy blue water inside her mop bucket on the floor , and being reprimanded in public my a fellow worker. And so on.
Overall, the stories fails to gel together. It is extremely difficult to follow the individual developments, and even to correlate the characters to their death. At times, the subplots are barely intelligible. An epilogue in Hokkaido – Japan’s northernmost and sparsely populated island – has a terrifying Kubrick stare, but the takeaway feels awkward and inconclusive. The banal message is acceptable for a genre movie, but it does not leave viewers with a sense of helplessness and fear expected from horror.
In a nutshell: this is a protracted and disjointed film, however with some significant saving graces.
Sai Disaster boasts some very violent and graphic deaths. However sparse, they are guaranteed to please the fan of j-horror. They include a collapsed body in front of a balcony several floors above, a wet corpse on the riverside, a horribly contorted body at the bottom of the shopping mall escalator, and a two-week cadaver at the basement of the public pool (curiously, the body lacks major signs of decomposing). Bright colours – particularly crimson red in text cards and pregnant pauses – help to emphasise the terror. The film does not, however, work as a horror film in its integrity, instead being structured more of less like a psychological thriller with some other genre elements thrown in. Sai Disaster may have the ambitions of Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998) and The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu), but it’s a lot less effective..
The most remarkable aspect of Sai Disaster is Masayuki Toyota’s outstanding score. Unnerving strings are combined with dissonant synthesisers to very powerful results. The music is the most palpable and visceral element of the movie. Think Ryuichi Sakamoto meets Bernard Hermann and you are halfway there. This is no exaggeration. The notes possess a very high level of cinematic sophistication. They will cut right through your ears and skin, leaving you terrified and disoriented.
Sai: Disaster is in the Official Competition of the 73rd San Sebastian International Film Festival.
