{"id":858,"date":"2025-07-22T15:38:53","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T15:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/chainlink\/?p=858"},"modified":"2025-07-22T15:38:53","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T15:38:53","slug":"what-the-actual-hausu-and-the-complete-derangement-of-the-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/2025\/07\/22\/what-the-actual-hausu-and-the-complete-derangement-of-the-senses\/","title":{"rendered":"WHAT. THE. ACTUAL? &#8211;\u00a0HAUSU\u00a0AND THE COMPLETE DERANGEMENT OF THE SENSES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About twenty minutes into&nbsp;<em>Hausu<\/em>&nbsp;&#8211; which translates, fairly obviously, as&nbsp;<em>House<\/em>, but which I\u2019m going to refer to&nbsp;<em>Hausu<\/em>&nbsp;throughout this review purely to piss off autocorrect &#8211; seven friends hop off a train at a rural station and make for the middle-of-nowhere residence belonging to a relative. It\u2019s so out-of-the-way that the montage depicting their journey vibes less weirdo horror movie than nymphet version of&nbsp;<em>Deliverance<\/em>. At one point they go happily skipping across a rickety bridge that\u2019s about one woodworm banquet away from collapse and director, at which point director Nobuhiko \u00d4bayashi<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>hits pause on the narrative and superimposes close-ups of each of them, accompanied by their respective names: Melody, Fantasy, Prof, Sweetie, Kung Fu, Mac and Angel. And I doubt you\u2019ll ever see another film whose protagonists are lumbered with that set of monikers &#8211; not without it being a porno, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cheap sarcasm apart, this scene is actually quite helpful as up until then I\u2019d been thinking of as, respectively, The Winsome One Who Plays Piano, The One Who\u2019s BFF To The One With Daddy Issues, The Nerdy One In Glasses Who\u2019s Actually A Total Girl Crush, The Squeaky Perky One, The Sporty One Who Busts Unconvincing Martial Arts Moves, The One Who\u2019s Always Eating And Is Supposed To Be Fat, and the aforementioned One With Daddy Issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How we\u2019ve got to this death trap bridge in the woods is on account of Little Miss Daddy Issues, who takes umbrage at her widower father meeting a woman who isn\u2019t the ghost of his wife, and basically kidnaps a bunch of her friends to spend the school holidays at her Aunt\u2019s. Fair dues, she has the common courtesy to check with Auntie first and the old lady writes back by return to say &#8211; and I\u2019m paraphrasing only a little bit here &#8211; \u201cyes please come and stay at my creepy and isolated old house\u201d. Twenty minutes is an awfully long time, in a movie that runs less than an hour and half, to spend on this kind of soft-focus soap opera noodling, no matter how much \u00d4bayashi<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>loads it with unsubtle foreshadowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, arrive at Auntie\u2019s pad they do, and the basic requirements of what follows click into place:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>septet of face-palmingly naive nymphets<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>elderly relative with something slightly off about them&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>creepy house, the dimensions and layout of which make the Overlook seem like a two-room flat&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the fluffiest cat in Japan, which is possessed of supernatural abilities&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What happens next can broadly be summed up in three words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What. The. Fuck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, that doesn\u2019t do it justice. Four words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What. The. Actual. Fuck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still doesn\u2019t quite cover it. Seventeen words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What. The. Eyeball. Melting. Brain. Goes. Into. Shutdown. Jaw. On. The. Floor. Actual. Ever. Loving. Unholy. Fuck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s no easy way to synopsise the, ahem, \u201cplot\u201d. It\u2019d take a more accomplished writer than me to even delineate the general order of things that happen. Just glancing at the notes I made while watching, I\u2019m not sure if I could flesh out \u201cdemonic lamp shade, bad kung-fu, shit graphics\u201d into anything more coherent. Or \u201cpsychedelic piano goes nom, naked body parts have a boogie\u201d. The best I can do, I guess, is present a sampling of some of the, er, \u201cdelights\u201d\u00a0<em>Hausu<\/em> has in store and then cautiously recommend you go and watch it. Not because it\u2019s any good &#8211; it\u2019s frequently fuck-awful &#8211; but because you just wouldn\u2019t believe me otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s a sequence where a watermelon lowered into a well defies gravity and the fact that it\u2019s meant to be inanimate and comes zooming back up only to turn into a severed head (the unscariest severed head in the history of the horror genre, it has to be said) and bites someone on the ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s a sequence where Auntie teleports into a fridge to give one of the girls a scare, then teleports onto a rafter where she does a showy little dance with a skeleton after which she repairs to her chamber for a light supper of wine and a disembodied hand. Meanwhile, the girls shake their heads and agree that the fridge business was probably a trick of the imagination.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s a sequence where Angel combs her hair at a dressing table, her reflection in the mirror morphing into the younger Auntie, the younger Auntie as a vampire and then Angel herself as a vampire. At which point most filmmakers would have reckoned they\u2019d fucked with the viewer\u2019s head quite nicely and cut to the next scene. But, oh no, the creative team behind Hausu are only just getting started. I can imagine that the script conference went something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAnd then after she sees herself as a vampire, the cat flashes green light out of its eyes and the mirror spiderwebs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCool! And then her reflection bleeds from the eye and the drop of blood oozes onto the opposite side of the mirror.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAwesome! And then all of the cracks in the mirror start bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cGuys! Guys! Guys! How about then we cut back to the real Angel and a piece of her face falls away like a piece of broken glass?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDude, you\u2019re a genius. And then the rest of her face falls away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAnd then there\u2019s fire behind her face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAnd then the whole of her turns into flames.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEr, fellas, do we have the budget for the broken face and burning effects?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNo, but screw it. We\u2019ll make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The effects in&nbsp;<em>Hausu<\/em>&nbsp;are dreadful and nowhere more so than in a scene involving a piano and a goldfish bowl, the imagery of which I hinted at earlier and which I won\u2019t go into in any more detail except to say that (a) I fear for the mental health of all involved, and (b) it makes the demonic lampshade scene look like boss-level CGI. Indeed, there are several moments where the visual craziness demanded by the script outstrips the film\u2019s budget (it was made in 1977 and perhaps only Industrial Light &amp; Magic could have made the effects work at that period in time) and some pretty shonky 2D pencil animation is drafted in to do the heavy lifting. Or try to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Hausu<\/em>&nbsp;is one of a kind in the way that Jodorowsky\u2019s&nbsp;<em>El Topo<\/em>&nbsp;is one of a kind, or Lynch\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Eraserhead<\/em>, or Greenaway\u2019s&nbsp;<em>A Zed and Two Noughts<\/em>. But whereas those films are deadly serious in their execution, Hausu spends half its time laughing at you. It throws in an extended bit of slapstick featuring a cat, a flight of steps, a tin pan and a set of drum sticks; a grotesque watermelon seller who fulfils that inexplicably popular back-in-the-day trope that morbidly obese male = comic relief; a cluster of supposedly spooky scenes that can only have been conceived as comedic; and a choice of needle-drops on the soundtrack so inappropriate to the visuals that you\u2019d have to replace \u2018Ride of the Valkyries\u2019 in&nbsp;<em>Apocalyse Now<\/em>&nbsp;with the Benny Hill music to come anywhere close.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think of the weirdest horror film you\u2019ve ever seen.&nbsp;<em>The Devil\u2019s Rain<\/em>?&nbsp;<em>Messiah of Evil<\/em>?&nbsp;<em>Suspiria<\/em>?&nbsp;<em>Xtro<\/em>? I\u2019ll see you and I\u2019ll raise you. In fact, I\u2019ll bet the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Lucy Bellingham&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About twenty minutes into&nbsp;Hausu&nbsp;&#8211; which translates, fairly obviously, as&nbsp;House, but which I\u2019m going to refer to&nbsp;Hausu&nbsp;throughout this review purely to piss off autocorrect &#8211; seven friends hop off a train at a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,11,41],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-film","category-reviews","tag-july-issue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/hausu.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbook.org.uk\/tracks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}