THE HOUSE OF THE SERPENT *** Japan 2022 Dir: Hiroshi Takahashi. 77 mins
I quite enjoy the Asian ghost story usually in the framework of an urban legend. When it works, there is a special look and feel as in the brilliant Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (2007) to the genre classics like the Ringu series, Kwaidan (1964) and House (1977). These pictures would often mix contemporary social commentary with supernatural influence. The world of family history, demons and witchcraft all come together in Hiroshi Takahashi’s talkfest The House Of The Serpent (2022)
Takahashi wrote the first two installments of the Ringu series with The House Of The Serpent (2022) one finds a film backhandedly exploring the role of women in the ghost or demonic possession world. The serpents of the story are not only the obvious but the spirits of females who are possessed yet do not go to hell instead live on in the bodies of snakes
The picture centers around a work on a new project, that writer Naomi (Shôko Nakahara) is planning to do. It will be an adaptation of a local story involving a woman who disappeared into thin air. She hires a female actor Mizuki (Tomomi Kouno) to her older rural home with her friend/agent Omit (Shôjirô Yokoi) for inspiration. The more they work through the scenes and stay in the home events become disturbed by the haunting visions of past tragedies on the property and their lives. The ghosts come out including spectral figures carrying heads as seen on security cameras. Family secrets of childbirth, surviving trauma, marital infidelity and demonic possession all come charging out during moments in the picture.
The trouble is that these plot points are between a glacial pace of dialogue, character building and often picturesque shots of wooded areas. Often, it’s like an older Classic Russian novel that you can miss a plot point that happens on page eight hundred that was set up in the first two hundred due chiefly to the low conversation tone of the actors. The focus is more on the mystery approach and the two of them force themselves into trying to understand the events happening to them. In many ways since the cast is primarily three people The House Of The Serpent (2022) would have been better on stage than as a film since it lacks the necessary build-up of atmosphere in the case of the Robert Wise Directed The Haunting (1963). It is not as tough to explain with the atmospheric shots of the forest with the wind blowing as in the overrated video game on film slasher In a Violent Nature (2024).
The House Of The Serpent (2022) is a listening picture with only small moments of novel terror like faces at the windows during the evening and speaking heads that advise in the garden. The actors all enjoy moments of dialogue and funny yet terror-filled inspired sequences creating a chalk pentagram to hide from the demons. Words get in the way of the visual in this one which doesn’t take away from the rural location with the roads, the trees and the ever-present dark spot of earth in the garden that is a gateway to hell. Just not enough to move this story along to keep some folk’s attention more accustomed to white-faced, acrobatic ghosts crawling on the floor.
Review by Terry Sherwood
The House Of The Serpent is out now from VIPCO & BayView Entertainment including on Hoopla in the USA and other Digital Platforms worldwide.