Why Hausu remains one of the weird­est hor­ror films ever made

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s cult favourite Hausu (House) was released 40 years ago, and it’s worth re-vis­it­ing this enig­ma of a film to explore why one of the most ​‘ter­ri­ble’ films ever made remains so huge­ly enter­tain­ing. Although it was not well liked by crit­ics upon its ini­tial Japan­ese release, audi­ences loved it and the film quick­ly became a box-office suc­cess. By the time it was re-released in Amer­i­ca in 2009, many crit­ics were prais­ing it too.

From the out­set, Hausu seems ful­ly aware that it is attempt­ing some­thing remark­able, mak­ing it a fas­ci­nat­ing exer­cise in decon­struc­tivist film­mak­ing. It dis­sects itself, makes all its seams vis­i­ble, and plays to mock itself and those which have come before it. It flaw­less­ly blends its hand-made effects with skil­ful com­e­dy and unfor­get­table moments of hor­ror, although to call it a com­e­dy-hor­ror feels slight­ly unfair giv­en its enig­mat­ic sin­gu­lar­i­ty. Almost cer­tain­ly, its suc­cess lies in the inten­tion­al­i­ty of its design.

This delib­er­ate­ness exist­ed right from the con­cep­tion of the film, when Obayashi decid­ed to con­sult his pre-teen daugh­ter, Chigu­mi, for sto­ry ideas. Not all of her sug­ges­tions were used, but her youth­ful errat­ic thoughts has appeared to influ­ence the struc­ture of the film, and many of her ideas were used in the final script – the mir­ror scene, the water­mel­on being pulled out of the well to reveal a sev­ered head, and, most notably, the girl-devour­ing house were all hers.

On top of this, Chigu­mi and her father worked her child­hood fears – of a loud clock and of get­ting her fin­gers caught between the keys on a piano – into the final script. (Inter­est­ing­ly, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Toho, didn’t want Obayashi to direct and only con­ced­ed when it became clear that none of their staff direc­tors want­ed the project, delay­ing pro­duc­tion by two years.)

Obayashi fur­thered the con­cept of child­like fears dur­ing pro­duc­tion when, as act­ing direc­tor of spe­cial effects, he decid­ed to make the spe­cial effects look as though a child had made them. The film takes every oppor­tu­ni­ty to make the audi­ence laugh, reusing back­drops while also draw­ing atten­tion to repeat­ed lines of dia­logue. A num­ber of scenes fea­ture an obvi­ous­ly plas­tic smil­ing skele­ton on strings, oth­ers con­tain a lot of strange­ly orange blood, and at one point a back­drop is placed direct­ly in front of a much larg­er back­drop so that we can clear­ly see both in shot. Almost cer­tain­ly, the water­mel­ons are not real.

Obayashi has said that some spe­cial effects didn’t turn out as he had hoped – but odd­ly enough this actu­al­ly adds an extra lay­er of charm and humour to the film. Aside from its obvi­ous quirk­i­ness, Hausu is also filled with moments of vis­cer­al hor­ror, which are even more effec­tive because they are unex­pect­ed. A musician’s fin­gers being eat­en by a piano, regard­less of the qual­i­ty of the spe­cial effects, is an inher­ent­ly dis­turb­ing image. It’s an inter­est­ing film to watch with friends, too, sim­ply because it is hor­ri­fy­ing for so many dif­fer­ent reasons.

Ulti­mate­ly it is self-aware­ness that makes this can­dy-coat­ed hor­ror so delight­ful­ly enter­tain­ing. By com­bin­ing pre­dictable scares, child­ish con­cepts and sil­ly spe­cial effects, Obayashi man­aged to cre­ate some­thing total­ly unique and mas­sive­ly influ­en­tial. Not many films are brave enough to quite lit­er­al­ly call out the genre to which they belong for being out­dat­ed, but Hausu made sure to say it loud and proud.