Kaoru's (Maho Nonami) brother Tsuyoshi has disappeared. Having no living relatives anymore the young woman and her brother are especially close to one another, so his leaving without any explanation is very disturbing for her. The only clue to his whereabouts is a letter that Kaoru finds in his apartment. It is from Izumi, who once was Kaoru's best friend and unhappily in love with Tsuyoshi. In it Izumi begs him to come to the village she is now living in.
Of course Kaoru drives to the village that can only be reached through a long dark tunnel (might it be a metaphor!?). Just a few feet before the tunnel ends, her car breaks down, so she has to make her way on foot, past an unhelpful worker loading scarecrows (kakashis) on a truck and a weird older lady who treats a small kakashi as if it were a baby. The other villagers she meets project disapproval like the mean old maths teacher of my nightmares.
Her welcome upon arrival at Izumi's parents' house isn't much of an improvement. Izumi's mother seems to blame Kaori for something, while the father is a little more friendly, but wants to get rid of Kaori as soon as possible.
They tell her that her brother hasn't been there anyway and Izumi is being treated in a clinic close by.
The father is at least willing to let Kaoru spend a night in the house, so she can leave the village in a hopefully fixed car the next day.
By night, Kaoru has a strange dream about Izumi, her brother and kakashis; if it wasn't more than just a dream.
Everything seems to point to the kakashi festival that will take place in two days time as something more sinister than just a rural ritual.
Kakashi is a fine little movie based on a manga by the great Junji Ito that hasn't been translated (not even scanslated) into English yet, so I can't say anything about its quality as an adaptation.
Its quality standing on its own on the other hand is something tastes will be divided about. If you are looking for a typical scarecrow revenge horror flick (there are enough films in this vein to build a sub-genre of their own, I think), you have come to the wrong movie. In fact, the living and walking scarecrows are the weak point of the film. They are mostly looking rather ridiculous and are used in a quite lackluster fashion.
Fortunately, Kakashi belongs to the type of psychological horror in which the supernatural is a way to talk more clearly about a theme, in this case the complex structure guilt, love and death can build in the mind of the surviving. The film does this very effective and evades easy answers, instead aiming for the ambiguities of emotion most of us can relate to.
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