Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

Apparently I can’t get enough of the sexy sexy violence Higurashi (aka When They Cry) brings to the table. Tasty. So after watching all twenty some odd episodes a couple weeks back, I couldn’t help myself and looked up any sequels and spin-offs and well, my desktop is now a few gigs of creepy cute super violence heavier. Of all the Higurashi things out there, the live action movie was the hardest for me to find, but find it I did. The live action movie is, naturally, shorter than the series by a lot, so to compensate for it the movie only covers the first chapter of the anime series. While I don’t want to make too many comparisons, I’m afraid I won’t be able to help it given the shoes the movie has to fill.

For those that did not read my Higurashi review a couple weeks back, I’ll give you another summary: Keiichi, a high school student, transfers from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo to the quiet mountain town of Hinamizawa. Keiichi quickly settles into his life surrounded by cute girls and lots of fun, carefree days. However, rumors of a gruesome murder and a failed dam project bring Keiichi’s fun to an end. With the Cotton Drifting Festival drawing near, will he find out the truth before the curse strikes again?

Corny intros aside, I can’t quite do this review like my other ones since my terrific trinity of animation-music-story don’t quite apply here. Come to think of it, I’ve never done a live action review of anything before. Well, let’s just wing it and hope this doesn’t catch itself on fire from sheer suck.

The Higurashi movie is filmed like, well, a movie. It has real people and a real mountain town and violence that they try to make look real. The cinematography is pretty good with lots of dynamic landscape shots and a good use of light and shadow. The sets are good and they really play up the feel of a rustic mountain town. Looking at the Hinamizawa of the movie it really comes across as an idyllic setting; I would like to live there. It also made me pretty happy to hear them mention winter since the series is time locked in June. All of the set pieces, from the cars to the clothes to the alarm clocks, are all accurate to the period (i.e. the early 80’s). I get the impression someone put a lot of work into making the setting as perfect as they could. Unfortunately, I think they put all of the budget into it as well.

Violence, at least the disturbing kind Higurashi is known for, is only brutal because it is hard hitting and brutal; visceral would be another word I would use for it. To get that across, you need more than a rubber hand, some putty, and several gallons of fake blood. Sadly, that’s all they had for the violence in the movie. While I’m glad they didn’t take the terrible CG route, I wish they had put some more effort into the violence of the movie. There’s this odd contrast, too, as the scene with Keiichi biting into food with a needle in it is really well done, but the part with Rena’s hand in the door looks really hokey. Same goes for the two scenes of people clawing their throats out; one of them was done up really well with makeup that looked like torn skin, the other looks like smeared red paint. I would say don’t get me started on the baseball bat scene, but with how important it is I can’t ignore it. See, without the highly stylized animation, some of the scenes needed more aggressive direction to get the same impact that the animated version had. I understand that blood splatter doesn’t show up very well at night in real life, but it kills the whole scene to have it occur during the day. Also, fake blood looks even more fake in broad daylight. In the anime series, the first arc isn’t as graphically violent so they have somewhere to take it in further episodes, but the movie doesn’t need to hold back. I would really have liked to see someone get hit with the bat. I also would have liked it if the people hit with the bat looked like they’d been hit; getting beaten to death by a baseball bat will not leave you leaning up against a wall looking like someone blasted you with a super soaker full of red food coloring no matter how much artistic license you exercise. More aggressive direction and cinematography could have made up for it, but they seemed more interested in reproducing the shots from the anime series than they did in getting the same feel.

I think the director failed to realize the difference between anime and live action as far as subtlety and atmosphere are concerned. While the actors for the older kids were good, the actors for the younger kids simply weren’t young enough; I don’t know why they made that choice but it really left the cast feeling unbalanced. Also, the actors simply weren’t cute/cute acting enough to make the sudden threats of violence seem as disturbing. I get the impression they were trying to stay as faithful to the anime as possible, at which point I am always quick to ask “why do we need it?” It really worked against the movie, too, as for example, Rena’s demon eyes looked really bad (they were put in with CG). Actually, it really seemed like they were holding back the whole time; but that may be my desensitized-to-violence-because-I’m-American-ness talking. I have to say, though, that I did cringe at one of the throat clawing scenes, and I mean ‘oh no I can’t look anymore please don’t make me look anymore’ kind of cringing, and ironically it was I mentioned earlier as looking like smeared paint.

The name of the game for Higurashi is atmosphere: the combination of cute normal things and the threat of gruesome violence generally leads to a foreboding, eerie sense of unease. Overall, though, I think they failed and the end result comes across as a b-movie. The movie is rather inconsistent with quality, with some scenes done spectacularly well and others left feeling like they hastily done as everyone ran to a TV to watch the series between takes. The feel of the mountain town is just perfect, but the horror simply isn’t there; Higurashi also lacked the feeling of something peaceful and idyllic going horribly horribly awry with no idea how or when, just that it’s happening and nothing can be done to change it. I’ve seen plenty of other Japanese horror flicks, so I do have an adequate basis for comparison when I say this movie was thoroughly blah. I mean, hey, if you liked anime Higurashi even half as much as I did, then you’ll probably get a kick out of seeing your favorite characters in fleshy form, but you’ll probably be a bit dissatisfied when the shit hits the fan.

~Whim

PS – I watched this as a fansub from EPIC-Pakapuka; yeah, I have no idea what that means either.
PS2 – See, if you thought I was biased towards live action stuff from my Nodame review, you are dead wrong. I judge things based on merit, not on any preferred style. Except reality television, that stuff’s is just awful plain and simple.
PS3 – One of the themes in Higurashi is friendship, and while it’s one thing to talk about sticking together, it’s another thing when you stumble upon your friend after she’s just killed and dismembered two people. How’s that for an after school special?