Jintai-mokei No Yoru (1996)

Author: movies enjoyer

AKA Night of Body’s Model, a weird/surreal horror movie by Hisayasu Sato that deserves more attention! (I only know of a VHS rip, but the cinematography is quite beautiful nonetheless.)

A neurotic young woman with an acutely precise sense of smell moves into an apartment arranged for her by her realtor ex-boyfriend in an attempt to win back her affections. At first she is more concerned with the mysterious disappearance of her friend, and the garbage disposal in the sink – which plagues her nightmares, randomly turning on during the night – than her neighbors, seemingly harmless eccentrics. In one of the adjacent apartments lives a reclusive audiophile; in the other, a medical student and his father who have recently left their church. Unbeknownst to her, the audiophile incel spends his days equipping his apartment with a massive amplification system so as to listen to her every move through the walls and vicariously participate in her meals/etc., while the father/son duo display an odd incestuous dynamic centered around the father’s prosthetic hand and Beethoven’s ninth symphony. As time goes on, her nightmares intensify, and things become too strange to be ignored…

Scenes:

• The student jerking off with his father’s hand.

• The incel’s apartment. Awesome tube amps used as props in his web of sound-gathering equipment. (1994 unison research absolute 845 integrated, Italian.)

• Unexplained harassment from a ridiculously obnoxious church person.

• The woman’s story about her ptsd – vegetarianism, from hearing a news program about Chinese dog-eating when her own dog died. Followed by a Guinea Pig 1 homage one might hope for.

• Oily sex. Multiple baths.

• The ending – trannies, beheadings, backstabbing. Apartments feel like haunted mansions c:

• Several cool shots of mid-90’s Tokyo architecture. (in general Satō films are great for architecture!)

The movie can feel slow at times but it really picks up at the end. And the dream logic is nicely executed, keeps you guessing what is “real”