I’m late this week because I couldn’t shake the giallo mood. I ended up using my usual horror movie watching time to view The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and rewatch Footprints on the Moon (the last because Sailor had put it in his list of 50 Greatest Movies Turning 50 in 2025). That was fun and all, but I couldn’t bring myself to subject everyone to another write-up of two minor giallo for the second week in a row.
J-Horror is always a good palette cleanser for me, so I grabbed my copy of the J-Horror Rising box set that came out in 2024. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to watch more films from the various box sets in my collection, and this seemed like a chance to make good on that resolution as well. I picked the first film in the set, Shikoku, and sat down expecting the usual dead, wet girls with long, dark hair that I’ve seen again and again in J-Horror. Films like Ringu, Ju-On and One Missed Call.
Shikoku isn’t quite that sort of film. In fact, it leans more into folk horror and ghost stories. I briefly toyed with watching Evil Dead Trap as my second film. It’s a crazy slasher/giallo inspired Japanese film from the 1980s but decided to stick with my box set. I randomly chose another film in the set and landed on Inugami… which leans into folk horror and ghost stories.
So I randomly ended up with a double bill of Japanese ghost stories set on the island of Shikoku. That’s a weird coincidence, but that seems to be the only kind I have these days.
The Medium(s)
As I mentioned above, these films were both in the J-Horror Rising set. It’s a collection of mostly minor or unsung J-Horror films that I (and most people) bought primarily to get a copy of Noroi: The Curse. It’s another great package from Arrow and came with a bunch of extras and a booklet on the films and the J-Horror phenomenon in general. While the special edition is out of print, there’s now a standard edition (without the booklet or other physical extras).
For streaming options, Shikoku and Inugami are currently available via AMC+ and Shudder for subs and can be rented or purchased via Apple TV and Amazon.
Shikoku
“There are too many ghosts since you came back.”
The title of Shikoku is a play on words in Japanese. The characters for the actual name of the island are 四国, which translate to something like Four Provinces (it being the smallest of the four main islands of Japan). The title of the movie, while still sounding the same, actually uses the characters 死国, which means Land of the Dead.
So, you know. Fun.
The film is about a young woman, Hinako (Yui Natsukawa), who returns to the small village she grew up in. She hopes to reunite with childhood friends Fumiya (Michitaka Tsutsui) and Sayori (Chaiki Kuriyama). Fumiya is glad to see her, but he informs her that Sayori is dead, having drowned in the local river when she was sixteen. (The same river that Sayori saved Hinako from drowning in when they were kids.)
Much of Shikoku plays out as a drama, with little in the way of horror or scares at all. Both Fumiya and Hinako struggle with Sayori’s death and how it affects them and their burgeoning relationship. Hinako, in particular, is upset to find that Sayori grew to hate her for leaving for the city, something Sayori always wanted for herself. When Hinako does see a vision of Sayori it leaves behind one of their childhood tokens of friendship – it almost feels like an aspect of Hinako’s guilt, rather than a true apparition.
It is indeed a ghost, however. And there are other strange occurrences – statues beheaded, a dead grandfather appearing to his grandson, Sayori’s father catatonic in a hospital with strange numbers appearing on the ceiling above his head. Fumiya finds a strange pool and cave on land that belongs to Sayori’s family, and a specialist in folk stories tells him that such caves were once thought to be openings that led from the underworld.
There is an elegiac mood that blankets the film, and this tone darkens as the film progresses. Hinako and Fumiya find in each other something they’ve been missing, but the shadow of Sayori hangs over them both. The ghost, too, haunts them like their memories. It never feels like a love story; it feels like a tragedy waiting to happen.
Eventually Fumiya and Hinako discover that Sayori’s mother (Toshi Negishi) has, like them, not gotten over Sayori’s death. There is a famous pilgrimage on Shikoku in which the faithful travel to each of the 88 shrines on the island, in order. But Sayori’s mother has been doing the pilgrimage in reverse. For sixteen years. The consequences of this act will force all of them to confront the past, and Sayori herself.
There are a few missteps – director Shunichi Nagasaki doesn’t seem interested in making a horror film, and as a result elements that should be horrific, or at least spooky, are treated in an almost pedestrian manner. The pacing is inconsistent at times, with some scenes lasting much longer than needed and others finished before you quit register what’s happening. The actors all do a fairly decent job, however, and it took me a few minutes to recognize Kuriyama had played Gogo in Kill Bill: Volume 1 (and Takako in Battle Royale).
The ending is dramatic, but still not frightening in any meaningful way. I kept hoping for some sort of closure, for a happy ending, but it’s not that sort of film.
The Bottom Line
Shikoku was a bit of a surprise, as I was expecting “classic” J-Horror tropes. Instead, I got a slow-burn melodrama that just so happens to involve ghosts. The film is enjoyable but contains very little in the way of real horror. I think I may end up watching it again at some point to glean details that I missed, but it won’t be any time soon.
Inugami
“If I take her away from here, she’ll crumble into pieces.”
Inugami is a beautiful film, from the first aerial shots of Shikoku’s mountains and streams to the traditional, almost sensual, way that the character Miki Bonomiya (Yûki Amami) makes paper. There are some wonderful shots of the forest from high in the trees that you would swear was a drone shot, but it’s a decade or more too early for it. It’s one of the best looking Japanese horror films I’ve seen, and it made me want to visit Shikoku. Just… maybe not during any 900 Year Rites.
The film follows the fate of Miki and her family after a newcomer, the schoolteacher Akira Nutahara (Atsuro Watabe), upsets their simple and ordered life. From their first meeting, Akira sees the older woman as young and beautiful, and indeed as their romance progresses the woman does appear to get visibly younger. (How well the “old” makeup – consisting of a few strands of gray hair and darker circles under her eyes – works is a matter of debate.) Their romance and the intrusion of Akira into the carefully balanced relationships, in both the Bonomiya family and the village, leads to confusion, mayhem and murder.
It seems, at first, as if Inugami is going to follow in Shikoku’s footsteps and be more of a melodrama than a horror story, but it’s not going to be that simple. There is horror to be had here – the women of the Bonomiya family are supposed to be keepers and guardians of the Inugami, the dog spirits of Shinto legend – but it’s more the horror of a Greek tragedy. It’s the collapse of relationships, the abdication of responsibilities and the superstitions of the townsfolk that allow the most horrific acts to occur. Yes, there are some supernatural elements – including a weird visual effect that might be the Inugami spirits themselves – but the things that are really terrifying are those that human beings do to each other.
Director Masato Harada (Chronicle of My Mother) balances a number of plot elements with skill – lost children (and the roadside shrines dedicated to them), consummate hunters (who have shot 999 animals and still save a bullet for the 1000th), familial shame, ghosts, possession, murder and suicide. As supernatural events occur – sudden windstorms, mass nightmares, a murder/suicide by a family from the city – the town’s not-so-hidden resentments of the Bonomiya family bubble to the surface, bringing threats of violence and financial ruin.
Akira and Miki’s relationship is at the heart of the film, and the actors made me believe in them. I wanted desperately for them to find a way through the mists of duty, deception, shame and fear to end up together, no matter the cost. As revelation piles on revelation, and the fear and weakness of the family head, Takanao (Kazuhiro Yamaji), lead the family into terrible decisions, that hope become harder to cling to. The film is, as I mentioned earlier, very much like a Greek tragedy (though being more specific would give things away).
I can’t really find fault with the film. It’s slow, but not in a way that causes you to lose interest. There’s always something beautiful to look at, or something terrible you can’t look away from, and the relationships – both real and imagined – are grounded and interesting. Even the choice to shoot the final section of the film in black and white – as if the action was taking place in an earlier time and place – struck me as right and necessary. If anything strikes a false note it might be the final scene, which takes a step back from the nihilistic edge of a true tragedy. I have to admit I was happy with it, though.
The Bottom Line
I loved everything about Inugami and actually feel bad that I’ve included it in this double bill. It deserves a more in-depth review instead of this truncated overview. Love and hatred, duty and desire, superstition and violence all combine in a heady mix of drama and horror that impressed me greatly. Maybe it’s only in comparison to Shikoku, but for me, this is one of those overlooked gems, and I highly recommend seeing it if you get the chance. I’ll be watching it again soon.
The Bottom Bottom Line
Both Shikoku and Inugami are more drama than horror films, but they both contain deeper elements making them well worth watching. While Inugami is – by far – the better film, they both dip their toes into folk horror and chart a course somewhere between the excesses of J-Horror and traditional ghost stories.
