Kairo by Kevin Ouellette
In early 2002 I was looking for new movies to watch and I happened to ask my friend Diandra if she had seen anything good lately. She always seemed to have interesting suggestions when it came to music and movies so I trusted her judgment. Apparently Austin,Texas video rental places are much, much hipper than New Hampshire video rental places because she had recently rented an import copy of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo from the recommended viewing section of hers. I told her I didn't care if she spoiled it because I probably wouldn't be able to find it anyway, so she proceeded to recount all these creepy scenes of shadowy figures behind taped-up doors and depressed people that commit suicide only to turn into black stains. Needless to say by the end of the description my fascination was only surpassed by my utter confusion. I knew I had to watch it.After a little bit of hunting I found a $6 import VCD on the web and ordered it, thinking if nothing else at least I'd have a creepy ghost flick to watch. Thankfully, Kairo was so much more than that. I'm generally not one to be scared by horror movies, so the fact that a relatively bloodless, slow-moving movie like this one sent shivers up my spine came as a complete surprise. In my opinion nobody conveys a simple idea (in this case, loneliness) on a more visceral level than Kiyoshi Kurosawa. To this day I can be sure whenever I watch one of his movies it's going to resonate almost subconsciously, and without fail I'll have to go back and watch again once the first viewing sinks in. Kairo was the first horror movie to affect me in that way. After that I started to seek out more and more Japanese movies of all genres until it became a full-fledged obsession.
Kevin Ouellette founded NipponCinema.com in 2006 and subsequently created Eigapedia, one of the most important online information resources in English for Japanese cinema the following year. He lives and works in New Hampshire.
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