By KEVIN HOOVER
Starring Ariel Sekiye, Miharu Chiba, and Eigi Kodaka
Written and directed by Masaya Kato
Distributed by Tokyo Bay Films Entertainment
Kinji Fukasaku’s pioneering Battle Royale – controversial upon release due to its subject matter of children pitted against one another in a game of kill-or-be-killed – was a watershed moment in horror history that was then replicated to great success with the more family-friendly Hunger Games series. While Masaya Kato, undoubtedly inspired by Fukasaku’s pivotal hit when filming his debut feature OUIJA JAPAN, was perhaps hoping to create the next great entry in this controversial lineage, what emerges is a work whose only danger is that it may bore viewers to death.
Expat Karen Fujimoto (Ariel Sekiya) is struggling to settle into a new life in Japan with her husband. When a group of housewives from the local community center invite her on an outing, with encouragement from her husband and best friend Satsuki Murakami (Miharu Chiba), Karen goes along in hopes of improving her standing within her social circle. On the first night of their trip, the women play a few rounds of kokkuri-san, the Japanese version of the Ouija board, and accidentally unleash the spirit of a local fox-masked deity. Overnight, a mysterious app is downloaded to each of their phones, and after the discovery of a corpse the next morning, the battle royale portion of the film gets underway.
Kato leverages Fukasaku’s masterpiece for inspiration while attempting to put his own spin on the formula. While the cast is obviously aged up to that of adult housewives, it’s the inclusion of a microtransaction system that’s conducted on each woman’s phone that makes for the most compelling part of the film. The fox deity – which sometimes magically appears onscreen, yet at others strangely just walks in and out of frame – decrees that there are 16 individuals, 15 of whom need to be eliminated for a lone survivor to escape the killing fields. As characters die, the app opens up more options, primarily in the way of booby traps and spy cams, to give the others an advantage. It’s an interesting concept that attempts to modernize the Battle Royale plot, but, unfortunately is only window dressing for a colossal mess of a film.
Karen is simply too one dimensional to become emotionally invested in, which is criminal considering she’s obviously built up as the final girl. Woe is her. She only has one friend. Everyone else rips on her because she’s a foreigner that hasn’t mastered the Japanese language yet. She believes no one likes her, and she spends so much time complaining about it that you most likely won’t either. Sekiya’s portrayal is incredibly flat, and for the first half of the movie, her dialogue is delivered sans affect or emotion. In an odd display of on-the-job training, her acting at least elevates to the point of “passable” by the second half, but still fails to give the character any real layers. The remaining leads – best friend Satsuki and “queen bee” Akiyo Yoshihara (Eigi Kodaka), who harbors a deep disdain for Karen from the outset – shine only because of the terrible acting they’re surrounded with. Yoshihara’s occasional attempts at pulling off a villainous cackle feel less maniacal and more like someone attempting a dry, sarcastic laugh at a tired joke that no one finds funny anymore.
For a movie whose premise centers on bored housewives killing one another, the actual act of murder is relatively bland and unengaging. Most of the kills are pretty tame, with a splash or two of computer-generated gore for effect. An early kill insinuates that a woman is sliced in half by a katana, yet the resulting corpse crashes to the ground with just a touch of the red stuff splashed across her face, all anatomical hemispheres fully intact. Budgetary or time constraints could provide an excuse for the lackluster effect, but if that truly is the case, the entire segment should have been reworked the make better use of resources. Ensuing fights are poorly choreographed affairs with sticks and swords, whose swings and stabs are carried out in a plodding, segmented way that you’d expect to see during a high school play. And nearly all characters are either shot or stabbed, fairly insipid means of picking off the other players that beg the argument: for a bunch of bored housewives planning a few nights away, why in the hell are so many of them packing heat?
OUJIA JAPAN may have started as an ambitious effort for a new director, one who decided that trying to ride the coattails of such a revered horror property as Battle Royale would be a great opening salvo into the world of commercial film making. When this sort of this is done well, the resulting work can sprout forth legs strong enough to stand on its own. When done poorly, it’s a mess that will be chided for its efforts to cash in on a proven concept. OUIJA JAPAN’s attempts to marry the supernatural board game with the deadly uncertainty of a multi-person slaughter fest fails miserably in both directions.
OUIJA JAPAN is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
