As veteran director Kiyoshi Kurosawa observed when he spoke at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan last year, the problem with today¡¯s digital imaging technology is that it¡¯s too darn clean. Even the cheapest cameras produce relatively pristine results; ¡°gritty, grainy images don¡¯t exist anymore,¡± he lamented. That¡¯s a slight overstatement, but when it¡¯s possible to make a blockbuster with an iPhone ¡ª as Danny Boyle did for the upcoming post-apocalyptic horror ¡°28 Years Later¡± ¡ª filmmakers who want it grotty typically have to turn to obsolete formats.
The low-resolution visuals of VHS play an integral role in ¡°Missing Child Videotape,¡± becoming an embodiment of dark forces that lurk just beyond the limits of our comprehension. Ryota Kondo¡¯s debut feature takes inspiration from urban legends and ¡°The Blair Witch Project,¡± while showing that its director has learned well from the masters of Japanese horror, Kurosawa included.
The titular videotape seems like a nod to Hideo Nakata¡¯s ¡°The Ring¡± (1998), although Kondo¡¯s characters spend much longer watching the tape than it took for that film¡¯s central spook to crawl out of a TV screen. In rough, wobbly footage, it captures the moment 13 years earlier when protagonist Keita (Rairu Sugita) saw his younger brother, Hinata, vanish during a game of hide-and-seek in an abandoned building.
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