The Scary House | 2025 Udine Far East Film Festival Review

Watanabe Smarter Than Ghosts, but The Scary House Had Other Plans

Venturing into the horror genre for the first time, Japanese indie filmmaker Watanabe Hirobumi’s fourth fearture this decade is viciously funny and a deeply unsettling nightmare – think if The Blair Witch Project deliberately flunked an IQ test—only to creep under your skin anyway. Built on dumbass logic, dry-as-bone humour, and a slow crawl into real dread, “The Scary House,” lures you in with absurdity before trapping you in genuine fear. By the time the banter turns into real terror, you’re already knee deep.

Opening with Watanabe in a conference room, a Tokyo producer sliding a job across the table: shoot a horror film in a haunted house for easy money. Watanabe mocks the genre for its cheap thrills and audience exploitation, but the instant they name the price (300,000 yen, roughly $2,000), his principles dissolve. A week in a “scary house” for that sum, he signs on without blinking, declaring he doesn’t believe in ghosts. After a mockumentary prelude, the screen cuts to black, shattered by Yuji Watanabe’s dissonant, Argento-inspired score. Red Japanese credits appear with the title “Foolish Piggies Films,” giving off a half-serious warning. Even slower stretches, like Watanabe interviewing townsfolk about the house’s legends, never drag – exposition becomes deadpan jokes and uneasy encounters. The caretaker, looking like Bob from Twin Peaks, warns, “Try not to die,” and you realize this ain’t no joke. At first, the house seems harmless – just eerie noises. Watanabe leans into his act, calling himself “Director Watanabe” with fake importance. But as conflicting myths pile up and locals warn him he’s now cursed, the cracks show. Fear nudges him to call cinematographer Watanabe Yuichiro, though even panic can’t override his cheapness – he offers a pitiful 10,000 yen (about $70). Then Kirishima, a self-proclaimed psychic researcher and the director’s female friend, arrives, tipping the film into chaos.

Dancing in its own absurdity, turning horror conventions into a dark comedy of ego and dread, the film plays like Ozu by way of creeping terror – banality giving way to inexplicable sounds: a rolling ball, a woman’s laughter, a baby’s cry. Watanabe clings to his wannabe-cool persona, sailor hat and sunglasses glued on like a Godard parody gone fierce – a clown who doesn’t realize the joke’s on him. Watanabe’s “cool act” turns nasty. He leers at women, begs Kirishima to sleep with him out of fear. The film frames his unraveling not as moralizing but as necessary: ghosts might be real, or maybe he’s rotting from inside, his ego and idleness manifesting as phantoms.

A patchwork of visual textures, deliberately mirroring its descent from mockumentary to nightmare, Watanabe himself appears wielding an old, chunky Sony Handycam—perhaps the earliest digital model after VHS – giving his footage the raw, unpolished look of a YouTube vlog. This contrasts sharply with the eerie, Argento-inspired compositions of the “professional” footage, as if the film itself is warping alongside Watanabe’s sanity. Yuji Watanabe’s dissonant score amplifies the unease, switching between dead silence and sudden, jagged bursts of sound. The house, shot in lingering wide angles, feels both mundane and malevolent – its ordinary decay hiding something far worse.

“The Scary House,” is a brutal, hilarious dismantling of horror and ego – a film that laughs at fear until fear laughs back. Watanabe Hirobumi crafts a nightmare where the real monster might just be the man holding the camera. Don’t expect cheap jumpscares; expect to be unsettled, amused, and then trapped.

Reviewed on April 26th at the 2025 Udine Far East Film Festival – Out Of Competition Programme. 99 Minutes.

★★★/☆☆☆☆☆