How much bad luck can one person have before they start thinking someone’s out to get them? Released as part of double bill with The Vampire Doll and based on a novel by Kikuo Tsunoda, Terror in the Streets (悪魔が呼んでいる, Akuma ga Yondeiru) draws inspiration from contemporary folk horror and the paranoia thriller as one young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of mysterious forces seemingly hellbent on derailing her otherwise very ordinary and aspirational existence.
Yuri (Wakako Sakai) worries that her status as an orphan has set her back in life, attributing her inability to find permanent employment after managing to put herself through university by working as tutor to a societal stigma against people with no families. Up to now, things had been going pretty well. Though she was only a temp, she had a good gig as office admin staff at big company in the city, lived in a modest but homely flat complete with a small television, and was dating her college sweetheart. But then one day her boss looks at her with an odd expression and then abruptly drops the bombshell that he’s terminating her contract without offering a reason why. When Yuri calls her boyfriend he gives her the same look and says he’s breaking up with her, also refusing to give any kind of explanation aside from not wanting to see her anymore. If all that weren’t enough, her landlady then explains that someone else is very interested in her flat and will pay double for it so she wants Yuri out by the end of the month.
It’s undoubtedly been quite a bad day, but Yuri tries to stay upbeat reflecting that she didn’t particularly like the job anyway and intends to apply for a position as an editor on literary magazine which would suit her better. But after that nothing quite goes to plan and everything she tries to improve her situation backfires until she finally considers taking her own life at railway crossing only to be rescued by a mysterious man, Fujimura (Takashi Fujiki), who appears as her saviour but then convinces her to take some kind of pill to calm her nerves which predictably leaves her dazed and confused. He then takes her back to her apartment and claims they’re legally married, but when Yuri wakes up the following morning he’s dead with a knife in his chest.
It’s not the first time that Yuri has experienced an apparent gap in her memory which causes her re-evaluate her sense of reality. She’s beginning to feel as if something or someone is out to get her, realising that Fujimura was the same sinister man she’d caught sight of before staring into her window. Meanwhile, she often hears a strange tune played on an ocarina that sounds like a medieval fugue. The film’s Japanese title is “the Devil calls” and it’s not a huge stretch to assume that Yuri’s been caught up in some kind of dark magic or supernatural curse, yet it’s also the collision of outdated and feudalistic notions of class and patriarchy that have her in their clutches. All of these weird men seemingly want to marry her or at least make her theirs with less than romantic overtures while chief among her aggressors Katagiri (Hideji Otaki) describes himself as an Earl and insists that noble blood is the most valuable thing in the world.
But far as she knows Yuri has no noble blood and is alone and friendless as an orphan with only a “distant relative” she mentions in passing who does not live in Tokyo. She has in effect been made a pawn in a cruel and ironic game played by a distant aristocracy which makes sport of the innocent and powerless by wielding the privileges of wealth and class. The only way she can escape is by renouncing her claim on its legacy, declaring herself uninterested in their games or rewards while ceding the prize to another woman who seems to have been driven out of her mind by a similar series of torments that may have lasted her entire adult life. Yamamoto films the contemporary city in an eerie light, a place of greed and darkness inhabited by sinister and shady forces that prey on the innocent and earnest like Yuri but then there is something to be said for the idea that in the end you can’t con an honest man and Yuri’s pure hearted rejection of unearned wealth just might be her salvation.
Original trailer (no subtitles)