Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Kwaidan!

Theme: Transcendence - Crimson Glory

The most lavish and impressive horror production of all time actually shares something in common with video nasty Unhinged: both films are at times so languorously paced that you practically start to nod off before something jarringly frightening happens to shock you back into wakefulness. There, though, the similarity ends, because Kwaidan is more like Kurosawa's Dreams, and not just because both are Japanese anthologies, but also because they approach the Platonic form of cinéma. Entirely filmed within a huge warehouse set made up to look like all manner of locations interior and exterior, Kwaidan's constructed dream-world is as stylised and incongruous as it is hypnotically convincing. But then again, a third comparison suggests itself: like South of Heaven, Kwaidan uses obvious backdrops throughout, producing the same superreal dissonance as the painted shadows on the sets of Caligari.

No movie lends itself so hard to making those cinegrids they post on /tv/ sometimes.

Kwaidan is set variously in periods of Japanese history I couldn't possibly name or profess any knowledge of at all, and seems to be based on traditional folklore of that most obsessed-over country. Some instalments are quite straightforward morality plays in which a protagonist's pride or folly leads him to some paranormal ruin, while others are more whimsical, even comical ghost tales with cryptic or file-not-found meanings, but the three-hour whole runs entirely on atmosphere. Its ghostly apparitions probably seem spookier to western audiences with no frame of reference for why they take the forms they do or what the fuck is going on half the time, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? Moreover, Kwaidan features the best battle sequence of all time of the week, and probably the best naval battle ever filmed:

You guys, I think I'm a weeaboo now.

I think it's fair to say that Kwaidan is every bit as objectively the best horrorkino as The Road Warrior is the best actionkino or Apocalypse Now the best warkino*. You could compile a more-or-less objective top ten (or so) just by taking those GOATs from each genre, and it would be both more interesting to read and far more fun to watch than all those lists with Citizen Kane at the top you always see. But then, your list should be your list, which is to say it should be my list, because you have all the discerning taste of a village idiot. Watch Kwaidan.

*The theatrical cut, of course; French plantation scene apologists go back to r/criterion and kys.