World Premiere | Out Of Competition
Japan, 2025, 99’, Japanese
Directed by: Watanabe Hirobumi
Screenplay: Watanabe Hirobumi
Cinematography (color): Watanabe Yuichiro
Editing: Watanabe Hirobumi
Music: Watanabe Yuji
Producers: Watanabe Hirobumi, Watanabe Yuji, Watanabe Hideki, Watanabe Akemi
Cast: Watanabe Hirobumi, Yanagi Asuna, Watanabe Yuichiro, Hisatsugu Riko, Enokida Ryuji, Ami Chong
Date of First Release in Territory: August, 2025
For more than a decade Watanabe Hirobumi has been turning out a steady stream of indie films set in and around his hometown of Otawara in Tochigi Prefecture. All but the first, the 2013 And the Mud Ship Sails Away…, star Watanabe, often as a comic version of himself. He has also appeared in the films of others, including the 2022 Lim Kah Wai road movie Your Lovely Smile, in which he starred as a scuffling director who travels Japan trying to interest small theater owners in his films.
In his new film The Scary House Watanabe finally breaks free of Otawara (though his 2024 comedy/musical Techno Brothers sent the title trio on the road). It is also his first attempt at the horror genre, if made with Watanabe’s familiar dry comic style.
Influenced by the films of Aki Kaurismaki and Jim Jarmusch, Watanabe’s brand of meta, self-deprecating humor is distinctly different from the commercial mainstream in Japan, which prefers its comedy broad and loud. In The Scary House Watanabe ups the volume but never loses sight of what makes his character funny, beginning with his absurd self-importance and his abject cowardice in the face of the unknown.
He is once again a director but one important enough – or at least employable enough – to be hired by a Tokyo production house for a documentary. His assignment: spend a week in a house said to be “scary” – that is, haunted. Though professing a hatred of horror movies and a disbelief in ghosts, Watanabe takes the job, thinking it will be easy money.
Led to his temporary residence by a caretaker who looks like Igor in Young Frankenstein, he inspects the two-story house, which the previous inhabitants seem to have suddenly abandoned. The rooms are full of their possessions, including Watanabe’s bedroom which is lined with creepy dolls and stuffed toys.
The first night nothing much happens save for strange noises, but when Watanabe goes out to interview the locals they tell him the house is rumored be deadly. “You’d better not mess with it,” says one man. “You are cursed,” says a girl with oddly staring eyes (Watanabe regular Hisatsugu Riko). “You’d better leave.”
Shaken, Watanabe settles in for his remaining six nights, but the weirdness escalates. A ball is rolled by an unseen hand; a woman’s voice laughs and cries. Needing moral support, Watanabe calls in a cameraman friend (Watanabe Yuichiro), to film and keep him company, but the third night he is again scared out of his wits – no need to say how. In the morning he asks for help from Kirishima (Yanagi Asuna), a female acquaintance versed in psychic phenomena.
Diminutive, but with a powerful presence (Yanagi played the commanding manager in Techno Brothers), Kirishima determines that Watanabe is cursed and in need of an exorcism. But the demon possessing the now terrified director will not go easily.
The Scary House is packed with gags from beginning to end, most targeting Watanabe as he devolves from an auteur sporting sunglasses and a yachtsman cap (a possible homage to directorial style icon Kurosawa Akira) to a quivering mass of cursed flesh.
Also, the film’s atmospherics and scares generate genuine goosebumps, particularly in the climax, when creeping dread crowds out comic vibes. We already knew Watanabe was a rare comic talent. One more movie like The Scary House, minus the laughs, and we can also call him a master of horror.
Watanabe Hirobumi
Watanabe Hirobumi (b. 1982 in Otawara) teamed with his brother Yuji, a film composer, to make his first feature film,
And the Mud Ship Sails Away (2013). After his second film,
7 Days (2015), Watanabe released at least one film a year, also becoming an in-demand actor in other director’s films. In 2020 Udine FEFF presented a section of Watanabe’s films, though the director himself could not appear due to pandemic travel restrictions. He and Yuji came to Udine in 2023 to present
Techno Brothers and
Way of Life.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
2013 – And the Mud Ship Sails Away...
2015 – 7 Days
2016 – Poolside Man
2017 – Party ‘Round the Globe
2018 – Life Finds a Way
2019 – Cry
2020 – Kamata Prelude (episode)
2020 – It’s Really Good
2023 – Techno Brothers
2023 – Way of Life
2025 – The Scary House