This episode is sponsored by Filmora Noroi is a 2005 Japanese horror film And it's one of the most unique horror experience I ever had It's about a journalist investigating A series of paranormal mysteries From missing children To occult rituals At first, the film appears to be a series of unrelated scenes Each telling a separate horror story But as the film progresses All stories begin to converge And by the end It is exhilarating "There must be a connection" Noroi is often referred to as a found footage film Which is fair The entire framing device Is that the journalist has gone missing after his investigations And his unfinished film was found But, in practice It feels nothing like any found footage film I've seen In fact, it feels nothing like most horror movies Noroi gives off a hard to describe mood It feels realistic It feels personal Watching it is like walking down a hallway in my school at night Instead of some imminent danger I feel uncomfortable And I don't know why Today, let me dissect this film While keeping spoilers to a minimum Let's find out exactly how it conveys its sense of dread What makes it different from other found footage films And what we can learn from it This is Noroi: The Curse At the start of the film We get a quick primer A narrator introduces us to our protagonist Horror writer and journalist Kobayashi "He gathered accounts of strange occurrences..." "In his pursuit of horrifying and unsolvable mysteries" Footage of his books is shown Along with photos and videos of his past investigations Soon, we learn that after Kobayashi's last case His house was caught on fire His wife was burnt to death And Kobayashi is... mysteriously missing We'll be watching the unfinished film Made by Kobayashi Right off the bat It's very different to your usual found footage fair How does the Blair Witch Project start? A quick text explains the situation And the rest of the film is made entirely out of found footage Cloverfield? Same deal Quick text primer Rest of the film is all amateur footage But Noroi includes b-roll footage Scenes that are not part of the found video We continue with Kobayashi into his first case A case of where a family hears strange sound of crying babies Babies, plural Coming from their neighbor's house As Kobayashi is about the enter the house The film does a very professional sort of edits Where the audio of the next shot Leads the image by a few seconds "The spooky voices you mentioned... What kind of voices were they?" It is perhaps more apt to say that Noroi isn't so much in a found footage format As much as it is a documentary And that's the brilliant part I always find the found footage format lacking in immersion If Paranormal Activity actually happened in
real life It would have been heavily edited Spiced up with interviews and news footage And other documentary flourishes Fundamentally, I understand that Real, raw footage like this Just wouldn't appear in the cinema The format is so synonymous with fiction I have a hard time suspending my disbelief But do you know what format I associate with reality? Documentaries! Noroi actually looks like something that would be in theatres Or at least on TV With all the aforementioned documentary flourishes Steady camera showing clean but realistic footage Excerpts from other TV shows and News Interviews with professionals It's condensed, it's edited With no filler materials We are so used to this format being non-fiction When Noroi tells its story in the same way It abused our habit It hacks into our day to day experiences Fooling our emotional brain into feeling that What you are seeing Is a true story Now that's how you make it feel realistic Before we go on I'd like to take a minute to thank today's sponsor Filmora A few years back I was actually tutoring a group fo teenagers on filmmaking For their post production I searched high and low for the perfect editing software And I eneded up choosing Filmora Reason? Filmora is one of the most beginner friendly Full fledge editing software out there With its clean and intuitive interface Importing Organizing Cutting and triming All feel like a breeze It's easy to use Yet it does just as much as every other editing software I used It even contains some pretty solid titles and effects Not to mention You can download a ton more great effects Along with stock videos and audios Over at Filmstocks.com My favourite thing about Filmora is just how supportive it is The help button brings you to many detail step by step tutorials Making your learning process as painless as possible If you like to know more Check out the link in the descriptions If you are interested in learning filmmkaing I recommend Filmora After a fail negotiation with their mentally
disturbed neighbor Kobayashi has not choice but to leave He then visits an audio expert Who confirms that the soud coming from the neighbor's house Is indeed the sound of crying babies More than 5 babies... Kobayashi revisits the family Only to be told the neighbor has moved out And the noises stopped With the case seemingly ended Kobayashi says goodbye one more time The camera freezes Zooms in And a line of text telling us that The family of two died 5 days later In a car accident Like in many documentaries In this film, events happen in past-tense "Sever days after your visit..." "They moved out of that house." Tell, don't show, is a bold choice And the film utilizes it constantly We see the family describe the sound of crying babies We hear the family tell us the neighbor moved out We hear a friend tell us that their co-worker died in a mass suicide None of them we saw with our own eyes Even when we do see something Such as the demonic ritual We see a recording of it And had to be explained by a local historian Kobayashi, and by extension, the audience Is not there This creates an interesting mood Like everything is just a rumor Some kind of hearsay "You'd best stay away from her" And through these hearsay The film unsettles us Most horror films create mood By using terrors within our imagination Seeing a killer standing in the distance Watching someone getting killed For the vast majority of us These aren't something we will ever experienced But many of us have heard news of those things Death of someone Such as your friend's coworker Most of us haven't seen someone sleepwalks But we have seen VIDEOS of someone sleepwalks And so, Kobayashi only sees the video as well It relates to our own experience again We know exactly how those events make us feel We have that emotion inside us already
Real emotions For real events that we experienced So when the film mimics those experiences It is bringing the real emotion out Fooling us into thinking the film is real as well Now that's not to say the film doesn't show anything There are creepy neighbors Creepy children Creepy house with a messy front yard that looks abandoned Dead animals Children's drawing Sick child with unknown ailments Unreleased episode of TV People screaming in pain And many, many more It shows plenty of disturbing things And I love how small the things are As you'd expect, most, if not all of these elements Are all day to day experiences we all share More importantly They are all negative experiences And they provide the main scare of the film What are the elements you see used to convey horror? Hunted by a monster in your dreams Hunted by a monster after you had sex Hunted by a monster while struggling with depression Hunted by a monster in the dark if your mom has depression The same way we know found footage films aren't real We also know monsters are not real So whenever they show up We are being reminded that we are watching a movie And so, Noroi opts to freak us out Through much more mundane means Car accidents Sleepwalking Or having a stroke All possible in real life But feels eerily cursed when happening in close successions That "something is wrong" feeling Now, the film does include other less believable elements Early on, the film introduces this young girl Who, supposedly, has psychic powers But instead of showing Kobayashi meeting her in person She was introduced through an excerpt of a variety show on TV A film, within a film It adds another layer of separation to this fact A third-hand account, if you will Making this girl and her ability feel even more distant Like Chinese whipsers The more distance a rumor travels The more exaggerated it becomes Thus justifying the supernatural elements The film itself isn't fake It's the TV show that's fake Like all reality TV shows are In fact, this segment sensationalize itself pretty hard Making you question the show Instead of the film While keeping these horror elements realistic and distant The film carefully arranges them Gradually increasing the impact At first, it's just baby noises And then it's a disappeared child And then it's sleepwalking And then it's a demonic ritual And then it's group suicide The journey down the rabbit hole is slow and steady Each increase in intensity is small If you are willing the believe one You are then primed to believe the thing that comes afterward And by the time actual demonic curses appear You are already primed to believe everything you see Noroi is a unique horror experience It may sound crazy to think a supernatural horror film is "realistic" Indeed, in terms of "realism" Noroi is nowhere near the top But this film proves that What is real Isn't necessary what FEELS real Can you persuade your audience that this is real? Does your audience WANT to believe? Most found footage movies failed to convince me But Noroi did Through the use of the documentary format The realistic horror elements And the unique investigative storytelling The film builds itself up as something that Requires very little suspension of disbelief from the audience It engages with our day to day experiences Uncover emotions that Most of us don't realize we have Let alone understand how powerful those emotions are These emotions lurk in the back of my mind throughout the film It is so creepy and strange That, even in broad daylight The imagery remains sinister Watching Kobayashi walking around this cursed village It really does feel like I'm walking in the hallway Of my empty highschool at night again
Ah yes, this seems like my perfect mealtime video