Please note: This was screened in July 2018
An unforgettable mixture of bubblegum teen melodrama and grisly phantasmagoria, Nobuhiko Obayashi's deranged, psychedelic fairytale is one of Japanese cinema's wildest supernatural ventures and one of horror cinema’s most exciting cult discoveries.
Distressed by her widowed father's plans to remarry, Angel sets off with six of her schoolgirl friends in tow for a summer getaway in her aunt's isolated country mansion. But all is not well - in this house of dormant secrets, long-held emotional traumas have terrifyingly physical embodiments including evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, amongst other outlandish ghoulish visions. Caught up in the mayhem, the girls have to use all their individual talents if any are to survive.
A true original this hallucinatory head trip is gory, silly, at times splendidly incoherent, and yet possessed of a fairytale innocence. Too smart, funny and self-aware perhaps to be truly scary – nevertheless its trippy energy and surreal unpredictability means, for connoisseurs of the bizarre, this piece of ceaseless cinematic invention will be taking up long-term residence in your consciousness.