In short: The Urban Legend of Sugisawa Village (2014)

aka The Urban Legend on a Village

Original title: Sugisawa Mura Toshi Densetsu

Three young men follow on the traces of a popular Japanese urban legend about a village in Aomori prefecture that disappeared from the maps after a villager murdered the rest of the population in a rather impressive killing spree. If you want more details about the urban legend itself, make your way here.

The guys actually manage to find Sugisawa village, but something the film will only explain much later happens, and only one of them returns home, bloodied and panicked and clearly dragging something supernatural with him. He tries to convince the sister of one of the lost men as well as another woman whose exact connection to the rest (girlfriend? friend?) never becomes quite clear to go to the rescue. Which might just turn out to be a horrible idea.

Directed by Yasutake Torii (if we do believe the IMDb when it comes to rather obscure Japanese productions), The Urban Legend is not exactly the sort of thing many people will go out looking for. Well, one of the female cast members is apparently an idol, so there will be a couple of fans coming in from that direction, but otherwise, the film is clearly cheap, slow, and will not be terribly exciting for most viewers. To get something out of its rather oblique storytelling, it does help to know the urban legend it is working from; a bit – well, actually rather a lot - of patience certainly helps too.

Armed with both of these things, I found myself somewhat enjoying some parts of the film. The obliqueness of the storytelling certainly adds a feeling of mystery (and probably confusion) to the whole affair, and makes what otherwise would probably too straightforward a tale a bit more interesting. The sound design with the incessant fake howling of fake wind in the background is cheap yet effective. From time to time, the director hits on a shot or two that’s actually creepy, and the – most probably budget-conscious – decision to show the reaction shots of actors to most of the supernatural happenings more than what disturbs them for most of the running time is not without its merits either.

Which is actually a bit more than I expected from the film going in, but I did enter with particularly low expectations, so make of this what you wish.