their opening reels to establish tiny details of character and set- ting that pay off in a farrago of violence and insanity come the finale.
The cultural backlash against gory horror has now abated in Japan, and the pendulum is swinging back towards extreme violence. In this new environ- ment, filmmakers like Teruo Ishii and Takashi Miike have made screen adaptations of the 1988/ 89 murders, popularly called the Otaku Killings. Otaku is a fairly insulting Japanese word for any unhealthy obsession, one that manga and horror fans tend to take personally. But otaku can refer to any obsession, the key distinction being the unhealthy aspect—and hence the negative connotation of the word. With the 2004 direct-to-video feature TO- KYO PSYCHO, Ataru Oikawa tackles the Otaku Killer case, but with a clever and subtle twist. If unhealthy otaku obsessions can develop over any object, then how culpable can that object re- ally be in the consequences of the obsession? It’s one thing to go
around banning horror movies, a fairly easy scapegoat, but what if a maniac developed a murder- ous fascination for something else—say, a perfectly innocent young woman? Would you blame her for his crimes? Oikawa revis- its the horrifying tale in a way calculated to challenge the very censorial impulse that put people like himself on the defensive. Popular swimsuit model Sachiko Kokubu stars as Yumiko, a young professional who fears she is being stalked by a former classmate whose mental instabil- ity and habit of strangling people sent him to an asylum abroad. The evidence mounts that her lovestruck admirer Mikuriya has returned, and in panic she re- treats into hiding and employs a private detective. Unfortunately, she discovers far too late that Mikuriya has been much closer than she’d ever suspected. Like Takashi Miike’s AUDI-
TION, the delicate character studies of the first half give way to more conventional horror trickery once she finds herself in her tormentor’s hands. However,
gorehounds will be disappointed by the tame shocks Oikawa brings out at this point. An ex- cellent EYES WITHOUT A FACE hommage passes by quickly, and once Kokubu has been force-fed some live worms, the film has few scares left on offer. In the end, the piece seems intended more as a psychological thriller about her deteriorating mentality. The most worrying concept of the film simmers quietly in the back- ground, an unsettling suggestion that her experience as Mikuriya’s captive has left her with some of Mikuriya’s less sociable personal- ity traits. As in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CURE, the idea is that obsession is a virus. The things that appear to trigger obsession—gory genre flicks, porn, comic books—are really just symptoms. An otaku is itself its own self-replicating force.
The script was adapted from a novel by popular author Hirayama Yumeaki. Best known as a true- crime specialist, Yumeaki’s work also inspired the partially satirical J-Horror goof CURSED. It was pro- duced by the same low-budget
Sachiko Kokubu catches the TOKYO PSYCHO red-handed.
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