DVD Reviews

DVD Review: EM - Embalming

By Andy McKeague Jun 5, 2005, 11:20 GMT

Shinji Aoyama’s ‘EM Embalming’ is an uneasy watch. It’s genuinely unsettling and morbidly fascinating at the same time. And as the title may suggest, it’s definitely not for the squeamish.

Miyako (Reiko Takashima) is an embalmer (get used to derivations of that word; you will probably read it here a few times and if you watch the movie you certainly hear it often enough). She is called out to a scene of an apparent suicide by grizzled Detective Hiraoka (Yukata Matsushige), who wishes for her to get involved with the scene so that she can experience all parts of her job. This experience leads her to many unexpected events but also to answers for some very deep and disturbing personal ghosts.

While carrying out the embalming (there’s that word again) procedure on the deceased boy, in unflinching and squirmingly unsettling close up for even the most jaded gore hound, she finds a needle just under his eye lid. She is aware that the police have already done their post mortem so why was this here ? Curiouser and curiouser she gets and decides to put on a detective hat of her own.

While investigating, she is confronted by a couple of strangely clad teens that take her to Jion (Kojiro Hongo), a religious cult leader who has his own interest in the recently deceased. Jion looks like a cross between Jim Jones and Elvis, and he warns her off finishing her work on the body as it is evil and the dead must be pure.

As if that was not enough, the head is removed and stolen; it seems she can’t finish her work after all.

It’s here that the movie shifts a beat. Added to the mix we now have illegal human experiments, black market organ dealers, Vietnam mind control, multiple personality disorder, suicide pacts, and some astounding personal revelations along the way. All told in a quirky sort of manner. There’s sawing off limbs and even chainsaw use, which will keep you squirming in your chair throughout in its almost clinical documentary style feel. The characters are somewhat oddball, the aforementioned Elvis-like religious leader swathed in gold, the Detective, like a drop-out from a noir flick in his eternally crumpled raincoat, even the musical motifs go towards Angelo Badalamenti’s ‘Twin Peaks’ territory. In short it is very much a David Lynch version of ‘The X-Files’, it’s probably too gruesome and offbeat for the clean-cut ‘C.S.I.’ fraternity.

Enlisting the help of the strange Dr. Fuji (Toshio Shiba), a black listed embalmer (need I say more) who has his embalming facilities in the back of a truck, and is involved in some other illegal and unsavoury activities, she tries to find the whereabouts of the missing head. Here she also finds that this strange man may or may not be her missing father.

Aoyama, normally in arthouse mode, plays with several directions within the movie, and although it might not seem a cohesive work it is none the less a watchible if not a gruesome one. It is very much in its own genre from the other Japanese horror flicks of recent years. It does not rely on scares from spooky kids in the darkened corners, but it is its tone which creeps under your skin.

As for the disc itself, it’s presented in both Dolby Digital 2.0 channel and 5.1, the later being the better option, and both in their original Japanese with removable clear English subtitles, although some did disappear a little on the fast side at times. There is a 20-minute interview with the director, which seems a staple in an Artsmagic release, which looks at the career of the director and his hindsight recollections of the movie at hand. More interesting though is Jasper Sharp’s audio commentary and like Tom Mes in other Artsmagic releases he is full of entertaining insights and facts about the movie and Japanese cinema in general. A few filmographies/biographies fill in the remainder of the extras quotient.

Not the kind of movie for a Sunday afternoon with Granny or the kids and the cover comes with a warning too that some viewers may find this disturbing (or perhaps this a promise depending on your point of view).