In Tokyo, the freelancer cameraman Takuyoshi Masuoka is obsessed investigating the fear sensation near death. When he films a man stabbing himself in the eye in the access to the subway, he seeks what the suicidal might have seen to experiment the same sense of horror the man felt when he died. He finds a passage to the underground of Tokyo where he meets a mysterious chained woman that doesn't speak and calls her F. He brings her to his apartment and he has difficulties to feed her, until he discovers that she drinks blood. Masuika becomes a serial killer draining the blood of his victims to nurse F, completely out of touch with reality. 
One of the most thrilling films I've seen in a long time (Lynch excluded ofcourse, hors d' categorie), submerged in an atmosphere that is as close to the perfect symbioses of Eastern and Western cinema as one can get these days. The scenery and colour scheme used in the film are just astonishing, and create the perfect setting to drown in the reality of the main characters life... A most stunning accomplishment by director Takashi Shimizu when you know he only shot this in eight (!) days. Then again, Eastern filmmakers have proven that they don't need several months and a multimillion dollar budget to make a masterpiece (Wong Kar Wai is no stranger to this).
The main character, being a freelance cameraman, is equipped with some high tech stuff to keep an eye on his precious 'pet' which creates some rather interesting perspectives to the disposal of the director. The implementation of hand-held cameras is not a new element in contemporary cinema, but the way that the writer Chiaki Konaka (novel and screenplay) sneaks in the use of mobile phones, surveillance equipment and so on is highly plausible and only contributes to the paranoid undertone of this feature. And, probably most important, creating some exhilarating possibilities in the storyline, something others failed to do before in this degree. On a scale of 0 to 10, I'd give it a whopping 9/10. I must admit I didn't get 'round to Takashi Shimizu's most known work, the Ju-on and their remakes, The Grudge series. I intend to do so one day, but for now I'll treasure this obscure beauty for what it is... one of my favourite Eastern flicks without Zhang Ziyi, kung fu or Wong Jar Wai being involved
Rated R for strong bloody violence and some nudity.
Premièred on May 22nd, 2004 at the Seattle International Film Festival and awarded with the Golden Raven at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film in 2005.
Trailer
Marebito at imdb
Takashi Shimizu at imdb
Chiaki Konaka at imdb
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