House

HOUSE (1977) - May 9, 2011
An almost inscrutably bizarre but kind of amazing film about a group of Japanese schoolgirls who decide to spend a few days at what turns out to be a haunted house.  It's a pretty straightforward premise, but director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi definitely has more on his mind than making a straightforward horror film.  Filled to the brim with kooky music, bold camerawork, colorful painted backgrounds, animation, and strange special effects of all kinds, this is a film that's always interesting to look at.  It's also really fast-paced, with weird stuff constantly happening almost just for the sake of it.  I'm generally not a big fan of weird for the sake of weird, but this movie really worked for me.  It helps that the characters (who have self-explanatory names like Gorgeous, Kung Fu, and Melody) are all very likable; it also helps that the film is flat-out entertaining throughout.  Really, it's hard to dislike a movie that tries to do something so far unlike anything you've ever seen before, and which manages to do so in such a gleefully enthusiastic way without ever feeling pretentious or laboured.  ***1/2