Episode 174: Pigeon Explosion

On this episode we talk about 2005's found-footage gem NOROI: THE CURSE!

To read the full transcript, go to https://rankandvile.captivate.fm/episode/episode-174-pigeon-explosion

Transcript:

Ryan 0:36

Hey guys, welcome to Rank and Vile, the podcast where we are ranking every single horror movie ever made, and this is Ryan

Quincy 0:41

And this is Quincy.

Ryan 0:43

How's it going, Quincy? How's your week going?

Quincy 0:44

It's going pretty good. I got a new audio cassette and I recently purchased a very nice used tape deck. I don't know if I told you about this yet.

Ryan 0:58

I don't think you have. Please tell me of your tape deck.

Quincy 1:01

I bought it at a Nashville Goodwill. So it's and what I've discovered is Goodwills, especially in the Nashville metro area, are starting to have old country music stars' stuff in them. So there's a lot of you know, there's you know, a surplus of John Wayne and Roy Orbison, like video cassettes but there's also high end stereo equipment. So what I have is a tape deck that is supposed to be hooked in to a soundboard to make an audio recording of the sound.

Ryan 1:48

Holy shit. That's--

Quincy 1:51

So I've also been able to hook this up to my cell phone and want to make mixtapes with a vaporwave.

Unknown Speaker 1:59

Man honestly vaporwave I feel like quarantine has been a great time for vaporwave, comma, lo fi hip hop beats to relax-slash-study to like this has been a great period for everybody getting back into lo fi in a way I really appreciate.

Quincy 2:14

Have you heard the Coronavirus vaporwave album?

Unknown Speaker 2:18

No, but I'm furiously googling it right now. I need this...

Quincy 2:22

It's called...

Ryan 2:26

Wow,

Quincy 2:26

I can't read this band's name out loud because it's just random Japanese kanji and and words, but it's just a whole vaporwave album themed around the Coronavirus.

Ryan 2:39

See this is, honestly, I've realized like music in quarantine has become a thing that's become really important to me in the regard that like, because I you know, I live in a house with you know, two other people. And so, during the day when all of us are going about our various like activities and we're working, everybody's kind of plugged into into our headphones because like you don't want to be that person in the house just like blasting music when everybody else is just like trying to vibe or trying to concentrate. And so lately for me, I... Quincy, what do you know about the band Wormrot? Have you heard of Wormrot?

Quincy 3:11

I have not heard about Wormrot, tell me more.

Ryan 3:13

Wormrot, you specifically need this band in your life. They are a Singaporean grindcore band. And they're they're just fucking phenomenal, like I've been so I've been doing a technique lately where I do the Pomodoro Technique like 25 minutes on working five minutes taking a break. And I've been combining this with listening to either death metal or grindcore because it's like just enough of a pounding beat to kind of keep me chugging forward, but not in like the melody and lyrics aren't enough that I can get distracted by them because it's just a sort of like brown noise at a certain point.

Quincy 3:46

It's also especially helpful because most grindcore albums are only 25 minutes long.

Ryan 3:51

Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Like grindcore especially like I love so much. Now Napalm Death, especially. I love what they eventually turned into. But when you go back and listen to those early Napalm Death records, it sounds like a really disappointed orc yelling because he can't get the office printer to work right. It's like a lot of funky noises and like "Reeeeaaaargh" it's just like, he's just so upset. But yeah, like honestly, I so Wormrot, you need to check out. So much modern grindcore I love that it's like almost non recognizable as grindcore as compared to like, early 90s like metal core and grindcore like I don't know if this is just like a genre thing. But it sounds new.

Unknown Speaker 4:35

The thing I really like is all of the women in the grindcore scene I've about gotten to the point where if you're a cis male and you're in a grindcore band, I don't care about you.

Ryan 4:47

Exactly

Quincy 4:48

But bands like Oathbreaker and Moth Mother are especially...

Ryan 4:51

Oh, really great.

Quincy 4:53

great. Moth Mother is amazing. If you haven't checked them out, yet. They have a EP that I have on audio cassette. And it's the same album on both sides because it's so short it fits on one half of a cassette, and they're especially good. I really like how... I'm trying not to use the word extreme when talking about

Ryan 5:22

I mean that's the vibe though.

Quincy 5:23

It's incredibly difficult not to talk about to use the word extreme.

Ryan 5:27

I mean, it is extreme metal. It's extreme punk. Like it's, it's no, this is actually this is my favorite thing is especially in terms of like cultural sort of cross pollination. I think my favorite thing about Japanese grindcore is that I, especially like mid 90s, Japanese grindcore sort of like took American and like sort of Western grindcore and went, "Oh, this is the heart and soul of what you're doing." And then they did it twice as fast and twice as intensely. And it's just like, it just obliterates everything else in like three seconds. But then you look at the dudes in the grindcore bands, and they're all sort of like wearing like hair metal outfits. And it's incredible because it's like they've absorbed all of these bits of Western culture and figured out what was actually interesting about any of it. I don't know, we're getting in the weeds with grindcore. The important thing is that we like to hear upsetting sounds while we work, I think.

Quincy 6:15

Yes, they're the best. So let's talk about an upsetting movie. We watched this week.

Ryan 6:20

Hachi mochi. So this movie... Alright, so this week we are doing the movie Noroi: The Curse from 2005 which was directed by Koji Shiraishi, who is the same guy who did that Kayako versus Sadako movie with like, The Ring... and now he's

Quincy 6:22

So I love that Noroi was his first movie. And then they're like, give this man the two Japanese ghost movie franchises. You know, it was just like action figures smash them together.

Ryan 6:55

Yeah, honestly, it makes me think of like the guy who did a City of Lost Children like Jean-Pierre Jeunet did that. And then Fox was like, hey, do you want to direct Alien Resurrection? And he's like, confused, but like, "Okay, sure." And it's like, they looked at this one guy who did this one movie, and were like, do you want this flagship property? And it makes me think of like, honestly, I stan David Lynch's Dune every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Quincy 7:21

It's got a pug in it, it canonically has a pet dog.

Ryan 7:26

I mean, there's not a lot of moisture on Arrakis and so that face, that's the face you get when there's not a lot of moisture in the region, it gets, it gets wrinkly, I honestly, that's my favorite thing is like when you get a director, right, who's got like a super strong voice, especially with like their early work, that somehow gets handed the keys to the kingdom to do a really big mainstream property. Now, the thing is, Noroi: The Curse was like, this was a hard to find movie for a long, long time. Like you, you couldn't really, you know, it was really, really hard to find in the West and then eventually, Shudder got the rights to you know, sort of streamed Noroi: The Curse. It is a found footage horror movie that is two hours long. I don't know how I feel about that runtime, by the way.

Quincy 8:13

So, you know, I was reading reviews online, and I saw a lot of you'll love it or hate it. And I'm pleased to say that I got sucked in. And the third act made the runtime worth it. And the format is, so I think we might have lost something by having HD because the best of these found footage movies are shot on tape. And this movie is the most grainy found footage movie I've ever seen. Now, part of that might be that my internet connection was poor the night I streamed this, but it looked like actual garbage. And it enhanced my viewing experience. 1,000%.

Ryan 9:05

Well, and this is a thing that I think we sort of talked about a lot with, you know, sort of physical media and the fact that you want you know, like for example the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you don't necessarily want to watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in you know, just like incredible high definition and able to see everything and actually I know H Bomber Guy, who's a YouTuber, has a great you know, video essay about this that like VHS was a format and is a format that's really really friendly to horror because of the sort of vibe that the graininess and the texture can give the thing you're watching about and especially if it's a found footage movie like Noroi: The Curse, like that's a big part of the appeal.

Quincy 9:45

Yeah, so the movie is about a paranormal author who is shooting a documentary. And the framing narrative is the cameraman says, I'm going to show you this movie, because that's going to help you understand what I'm going to tell you next.

Ryan 10:07

Yeah, which I side note here. I also love that there's a thing in found footage that a lot of them do where at the very top of the thing, there's a card that's basically like, this is the most brutal shit ever witnessed. We are banned from the Sundance Film Festival. This is you know, sort of, like where it sort of needs to put this disclaimer over the top of it that like, this footage is upsetting. Which you're kind of like, okay, man, yeah, like I was, I was on board. Sure.

Quincy 10:35

And then they actually followed through and they exceed all expectations.

Ryan 10:40

Yeah, yeah. Now and you're now the thing is, you're totally right, like the third act of this movie. I would say that for the first. You know, hour and a half of this movie. I was like, bored and annoyed? And then it kicks up, and I'm like, motherfucker, thank you. It's kind of is this a slow burn? Or am I being cranky?

Quincy 11:01

No, I think it, there's a lot of exposition.

Ryan 11:04

Yeah.

Quincy 11:06

And still, what's what's fascinating is normally exposition kills a horror film, because they don't need to know why the monster exists. I don't need to know that the old lady has been feeding an escaped circus alligator cows for 20 years. And that's why it's taken over the lake. I don't care. I just want to see it eat swimmers.

Ryan 11:31

Yeah, that's the that's exactly right. It's I listen, I don't need Michael Myers backstory to watch him kill people.

Quincy 11:37

And yet in this movie, it makes it work. It works. Because it is also intricately tied together. And also seemingly unimportant things become very important at the end of the movie, in a way that is really surprising. Especially because as a found footage movie, it is basically it becomes a biopic for this paranormal investigator, and you see all of these outtakes of interviews and these segments from TV shows and you think, why is any of this here? Who cares? You know, why is this relevant? And then by the third act, every single thing you've seen, is touched on and plays a key part to explaining what's happening.

Ryan 12:34

Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, so we the the main character of or I guess, not main character, but the the protagonist of the thing is Masafumi Kobayashi, who is the the paranormal researcher slash documentarian. And he is investigating. So at the top of the movie, we are made aware that there is a lady named Junko Ishii who she is a bad mother, you sort of figured out immediately...

Quincy 12:58

So, so this is what I what I especially love is Marafumi was a writer, he wrote in print, and he's like, wait a minute, I can get a video camera and just record this batshit nonsense? Let me do that.

Ryan 13:15

Which is the same process that you use to start a podcast by the way. Where it's like, God dammit writing long form pieces about horror who has the time however, my friend I've wanted to do a podcast with like this is, you know, well. And the thing is, he also Masafumi has this thing where he's trying I think a lot of the time to maintain sort of an objective documentarian attitude toward all of this, but immediately, all of the stuff he's looking at makes it impossible for him to be a reasonable stoic documentarian.

Quincy 13:48

Except he also gives a lot of, Get a load of this. Get a load of this horse shit side-eye to the camera throughout the movie, and it is very good. Yeah, the earliest things that hooked me in is his Can you believe this? Yeah, so he attends he goes to a woman in the suburbs' home because she says there are weird noises and you think okay, this is just a ghost story. And then she reveals the weird noises are from the neighbor's house, not hers, and that's where things get start to get bananas.

Ryan 14:24

Well, yeah. And the noise that the neighbor hears are the sound of babies screaming like it's just really loud baby's crying. And immediately I think you know, the neighbor is trying not to be like, I don't know if she's just got like a dozen really unhappy babies in there or what but it's a lot and it's really loud. And so you know, the, so Masafumi goes next door and he's like, talking to like, he knocks on the door and Junko opens the door looking like fucking Gollum, like just emerges from the dark, dark circles under her eyes like. She's clearly having a bad time in her life. And she's just immediately like, get the fuck away from my house. No, I'm not letting you in, get the fuck out of here. And as you know, Masafumi is like retreating from the house with the camera. He looks over and sees a little kid pressing his face up against the glass and it looks like a little boy. So it's just like, Alright, so Boo Radley lives in this house, I guess?

Quincy 15:23

Yeah, so even the neighbor's like we saw them move in. And there is a boy, but he doesn't leave for school. And she leaves only occasionally to get food.

Ryan 15:35

Yeah, yeah. Like there's a very, I think that there's an analogue here for like abusive parents, or like maybe not even abusive parents. But like, when you live with a parent who kind of can't get their shit together totally. And you've got kind of a feral kid and a mom who doesn't really know how to take care of this kid.

Quincy 15:50

And I think it also speaks a lot to that. Definitely a Japanese cultural moment, but also a Western cultural moment of, well, I don't want to actually say anything. It's it's easier to just assume that there are ghosts than to actually recognize that we need to call some government agency to remove this child from this home.

Ryan 16:17

Yeah, that's what actually that's what this is, is it's like the Japanese cultural cultural norms around it. Slash Haddonfield, Illinois in Halloween, where you've got, you know, Laurie strode banging on the neighbor's door yelling, please help me and they turn on the light. Somebody looks in at her on the porch and then immediately shuts the lights off and closes the windows, and it's like, Hey, listen, man, I'm not I'm not trying to get involved in anything happening here.

Quincy 16:39

So it is important to note that Japan has a hyper rich history of ghosts and spooky shit. Which is why I really like a lot of Japanese media. And also because they the indigenous religion of Japan is polytheistic a lot of the spooky shit just gets lumped into shintoism it's just like, oh, that's just part of it. There's just you know, talking umbrellas and

Ryan 17:11

Yeah, well, I mean, that that's kind of the thing is when you know, when you think of Japanese horror, you think of ghosts you know, like you think of the sort of like the the Blumhouse intro card where it's like, lady with messy hair wandering around in front of cameras, sort of a thing. And, you know, and and Japan especially, they've never really got on board with the slasher thing until kind of later on. Like they're very preoccupied with ghosts, I think as folklore.

Quincy 17:39

Yeah, and really the only the slasher esque movies you get from Japan aren't even slasher movies as much as they're just like, extreme gore like the Guinea Pig series. And and yeah stuff of that ilk. It's, let's just be as gross as possible.

Ryan 17:59

It's like the grindcore of horror, really, like yeah, you get into like, Guinea Pig movies and and sort of Takashi Miike stuff and sort of like you know Tetsuo, the Iron Man. They never I mean, I think that there's a very specific version of like slasher movies that's particularly American. And these you know, like a movie like Noroi: The Curse so much now, here's the thing. I do think this movie is in a lot of ways in conversation with The Blair Witch Project.

Quincy 18:27

Yes.

Ryan 18:28

Just in the way that it's shot and the way that the third act plays out, like in the way that you know, it's, it's like, a really good so like Fallout New Vegas has a great thing where you get to sort of unravel stories that happened within bunkers by reading entries. And there's this joy about starting with a weird thing. Like, oh, this lady Junko Ishii is like, having a weird time and we're hearing babies crying, and then sort of following a cord all the way back to the wall and then finding out that it's ghosts.

Quincy 18:56

Yeah. It's been ghosts the whole time. It's very good. Another thing that's great is this director directed a slit-mouth woman film, which is a urban legend, ghost of a woman who has a botched plastic surgery and has her mouth slit from ear to ear. And she asks children, do you think I have a pretty smile? And if you say yes, she'll cut your mouth. And if you waffle and are unsure, she'll cut you. And if you say no, she gets mad and cuts you so really, it's a zero sum game. But also, he's made a slasher film of that concept, which is very good.

Ryan 19:47

I support that energy actually that like every there's a flowchart for the slit mouth woman and everything leads to I'm gonna cutcha.

Quincy 19:55

Varying degrees of cuts.

Ryan 19:58

Yeah, there's no way you can walk out of this one kiddo. I gotta listen. It's gonna happen. I honestly, Quincy, I don't know if you remember now in terms of ghosts in Japan. Do you remember when that movie The Forest came...