Sweet Home (1989) review // The Haunting in Japan

When talking about the greatest haunted house films of all time, people will probably throw out titles like The Haunting (Robert Wise's original, not the shitty Liam Neeson-starring remake), House on Haunted Hill (I'll admit I actually enjoyed this one's remake), Poltergeist (an apt connection that you'll read about below), Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hausu (if you know what's good for you), or one of my personal favorites, Steve Miner's House (story by Fred Dekker!).  A title they probably won't mention is Sweet Home, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 1989 feature that has languished in obscurity due to only being available on VHS and laser disc.  It is a crime against humanity that a proper DVD or Bluray of this film has not yet seen the light of day.  Criterion put out gorgeous digital editions of Hausu five years ago, and they have at least one Kurosawa film (his excellent 1997 chiller Cure is available to stream on Hulu) in their possession, so what gives?

Sweet Home's plotting is conventional, which is surprising given that Kiyoshi Kurosawa wrote the screenplay.  The convention of the plot makes sense, however, given that the film was produced by the late Juzo Itami, who was box office gold at the time, as a writer, director, actor, and producer.  Itami even pulled a Spielberg on Kurosawa (echoing what happened to Tobe Hopper on Poltergeist), remixing the film to his wishes, and blacklisting Kurosawa in the process.  Whether this helped or hurt the film will never be known, as Kurosawa's version is most likely rotting in a vault somewhere.  And who's to say that the prolific, hard-headed Itami didn't improve the film?  I can tell you this: Sweet Home is an amazingly fun freak show ride.

The film opens with TV producer Kazuo (everyman Shingo Yamashiro) pitching a documentary to a studio.  He wants to showcase the lost frescos in the dilapidated house of a famous deceased artist.  With a skeleton crew consisting of Kazuo's daughter Emi, fellow producer/love interest Akiko (Itami's wife Nobuko Miyamoto), cameraman Taguchi, and art expert Asuka, they enter the secluded, crumbling mansion to seek out answers.  Does this sound familiar?  It should.  Coinciding with production of the film, Capcom produced a Nintendo game of the same name.  And for people who know their video game history, they might know that the original Resident Evil was heavily based on Sweet Home (the game and movie).  The bones of Resident Evil are pretty obvious when watching the movie.  Replace the camera crew with the STARS unit and the evil spirit with zombies and you're most of the way there.

Along the way Akiko runs into that stalwart archetype of horror film characters: The Old Man Who Knows Everything.  This time the old man is played by producer Juzo Itami in what looks to be old age makeup.  Though it is a worn out trope with these kinds of films, Itami's presence as the crotchety Yamamura gives the film a welcome goofy charm.  He walks through the film looking like a fisherman (shades of Robert Shaw in Jaws perhaps?), carries a large talisman on him at all times, and thinks nothing of the evil residing in the house.  While psyching himself up to face the ghost of the lady of the house, he meditates by singing a song and squishes a glass bottle of booze in his hand as if it were silly putty.  What happens next is even more over-the-top, as Yamamura cockily struts into the darkness to save young Emi.  When he walks out of the shadows, he has a full body meltdown, realized with incredible practical effects.

Practical effects that were provided by legendary Hollywood makeup effects guru Dick Smith, no less.  Smith's work on Sweet Home is one of the reasons why the film is so damn successful in what it sets out to do.  The achievement of the practical effects alone make it bewildering that this film has been kept out of reach.  There's a graphic, gooey torso evisceration; a fantastic head-splitting by way of huge medieval battleaxe; incinerated babies; the aforementioned body melt (not even talking about it in detail can ruin how amazing it is when seen); and the showstopper finale where the one-eyed char-broiled lady of the house sprouts babies from her back, turning into pure unadulterated nightmare fuel.

All of this madness is orchestrated well by maestro Kurosawa, who shoots the film as if he were channeling Dario Argento.  Kiyoshi Kurosawa has gone on to many successes in his career, winning prestigious awards at numerous international film festivals, and evolving his style with each new film he makes.  His psychological horror films like Cure, Charisma, and Pulse might be better overall, but none of his work holds a candle to Sweet Home in terms of sheer roller coaster riding fun.

5 out of 5 incinerated babies