“No one can be saved now” intones a victim of a curse having apparently accepted the futility of his situation. In Koji Shiraishi’s Kinki (近畿地方のある場所について, Kinki Chiho no aru basho ni tsuite), adapted from the writings by Sesuji later published in novel form, everything is indeed connected, though our heroes will spend the majority of the film trying to figure out how. Yet perhaps these breadcrumbs were dropped for someone to find, and in a certain kind of way the mystery in the end finds us no matter how we may try to hide from it or mistakenly believe that the truth will set us free.
A case in point, there are two mysteries in play. The first, the editor of a paranormal magazine has disappeared taking his laptop containing the draft of an upcoming article with him. His assistant, Ozawa (Eiji Akaso), calls in a freelance writer, Chihiro (Miho Kanno), to help him reconstruct the article using the materials Sayama (Atom Shukugawa) left behind. Finding Sayama is something of a secondary goal in that they are less interested in what happened to him and why he disappeared than they are in what he was investigating. They only want to find him to recover his article.
Yet the materials he left behind are strangely full of missing people and connected only by a series of strange images such as a woman jumping with her arms stretched out towards a tree, an eerie drawing of a figure under a torii gate with the symbols either for “woman” or “end” surrounding it, and references to local folklore that all point to the “certain place in the Kinki region” mentioned in the title. In the course of their investigation, Chihiro and Ozawa are also unwittingly exposing themselves to whatever Sayama may have seen, running the gamut from fragments of old TV programmes on worn VHS, to forgotten internet viral videos, and even a slightly creepy children’s animation based on a local folktale and intended to preserve local culture.
Perhaps some of these curses are indeed ridiculous. No one really believes in the power of a chain letter, as a gaggle of high school girls giggle over a viral text that says they’ll die if they don’t pass it on. But it’s hard to deny the eeriness that surrounds the disappearance of a ghost hunting vlogger who appears to have lost his mind after straying into an abandoned house, or the young student whose friend disappeared after watching a viral video titled “Watch this and die”. The young student later finds himself haunted too, but his attempt to enlist a Buddhist priest for help goes disastrously wrong, as does Chihiro’s to consult a psychic.
Whatever’s connecting this disparate series of strange events appears to be something dark and evil. But on the other hand, what lies behind it is maternal grief and the desire to reclaim something that has been lost. As part of their investigation, the pair come across a strange cult that promises its devotees that their loved ones will return if they worship their god. The local folktale, meanwhile, is about a heartbroken son who is devastated by the loss of his mother. A wizard who descends from heaven tells him that he cannot bring his mother back and should try to find a wife to ease his loneliness, which could he do by offering her a persimmon only no one is interested and he dies of loneliness.
This might be the cause of the mysterious mantra “thank you for finding me” that is heard on several tapes, as if this presence, whatever it is, is happy to have been recognised though it otherwise spells doom for those coming into contact with it. It has, however, seemingly weaved its way into the fabric of society, pushing its way into the digital realm as a background presence in every creepy video that haunts the internet. “You could have warned me,” Chihiro exclaims after seeing something unpleasant in a video Ozawa played for her, but really there is no warning any more and you have no control when videos autoplay on your feed. Even if you choose not to look, they come at you from ubiquitous screens and short of going to live alone in the mountains, they’ve become impossible to avoid. For some, however, these disparate clues act like stepping stones towards a particular destination they will stop at nothing to reach. Yet the scariest thing of all may be that at the end of the trail there are no answers, only more questions, and a deepening sense of mystery in that which cannot be explained.
Kinki screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.
Trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 