If you watch J-horror, you have likely heard of director Kôji Shiraishi. He has 95 directing credits on IMDB, with his most well-known film to Western audiences perhaps being the 2016 phantom face-off Sadako vs. Kayako. With his latest feature House of Sayuri (AKA Sayuri; Japan, 2024), he pulls off remarkable magic with tonal shifts to deliver a wholly satisfying haunted house spookfest.
Head of the household Akio Kamiki (Sen Kajihara) has worked hard to move his wife, three children, and parents from a cramped city apartment into a spacious house all their own. Alas, the angry spirit of Sayuri, a girl who was murdered there, isn’t as happy about the situation as the new residents, and she would just as soon see them dead. Teen son Norio (Ryoka Minamide), his grandmother who suffers from dementia (Toshie Negishi), and his new school friend Sumida (Hana Kondo) — who happens to have a special sense about supernatural occurrences — need to figure out how to stop the bloody carnage before they themselves become victims of Sayuri’s wrath.
Shiraishi, who cowrote the clever screenplay with Mari Osato and Rensuke Oshikiri — Oshikiri wrote the manga on which the film is based — weaves the flow of the film from straight horror into comedy and then takes things into serious places once again with a darkly dramatic reveal and revenge spin. Boasting fine performances, great-looking special effects including plenty of gruesome attacks, eerie atmosphere to spare, and an impressive juggling act at the helm, House of Sayuri is highly recommended for aficionados of Asian horror and any fear-fare fans looking for something delightfully yet devilishly different.
House of Sayuri screened as part of South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), which took place July 4–14, 2024. For more info, visit the fest’s official website at https://www.bifan.kr/eng/.
