Confession: I don't spend all of my time watching weirdo genre movies. I have nothing against quiet character pieces, comedies, or any other movie that doesn't feature something like a ninja fighting a giant centipede. Not only do I watch these movies I often enjoy them. Thing is, I'm not getting paid to do this. If I'm going to spend my free time and energy reviewing something I'm going to choose subjects that amuse me on the most immediate of levels. Using this criteria, the film Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness hits a huge number of my personal enjoyment buttons.
Azarak is the story of Misa Kuroi [Kimika Yoshino], a cute, magically powered young woman who battles the the supernatural forces of evil. This is hardly the first time this idea has been used -Misa apparently comes from a manga published several years before the movie was made and the concept of a magic girl fighting demons has been used many a time- but it's one of those evergreen ideas that always enjoyable no matter how many times you see it. As for the plot of the movie itself, it seems someone has been whacking people throughout Tokyo in order to form a giant pentagram. In the center of this magic circle is a high school. Will there be trouble of the magical variety at the school? Will the new, sort of spooky student Misa get blamed for the events? Will the girls spend the entire movie running about in those cute little school uniforms? Since it's a horror movie you know there's going to be plenty of gratuitous trouble to come.
The hyperbolic blurb on the back of the DVD states, "Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness is the first installment of a powerful trilogy, bringing together all the elements of an entertaining, sexy supernatural teen horror film." I don't know about that, but if I was going to think of a term to describe Azarak it would be "sleazy." Sleazy in a good way but still sleazy. An early scene in the movie features a male teacher groping a female student, all shot in loving close up. I figured the movie was going to stay on that sort of level when it blindsided me with a lesbian love affair between a teacher and one of her young charges. At one point in the film the two engage in a particularly steamy make-out session. I had been eating dinner during my viewing of Azarak but when that scene came on I stopped -fork raised halfway to my mouth- and stared at the screen, overcome by one of those moments when a movie transcends it's boundaries and becomes true art.
In addition to a scene that spoke to me, Azarak features plenty of people running up and down hallways screaming, blood splattering all over the place with a delightful lack of restraint, and lots of goofy chanting. This movie loves it's incantations. Even the title Eko Eko Azarak is taken from a witch's chant. I'm not up on my modern witchcraft so I don't know what the invocation is used for but I'm guessing I'm at about the same level of knowledge as the makers of the film. Instead of going with more traditional Japanese magic Azarak uses Western style magic since I guess it would seem more cool and exotic to the original audience. Actually, they aren't using Western magic so much as the idea of Western magic they must have picked up from some books and other movies. This means that by the time I got around to watching the film the ideas it was using had come from Western origins, been filtered through popular culture, bounced around Japan until they ended up in a movie and then brought back to the West so I could watch it. How meta is that?
From watching movies such as Azarak, the ludicrous Devil's Rain and other similarly themed movies I've begun to wonder why anybody would want to become a Satanist anyway. You have to spend your time in out of the way make-shift alters sketching up loads of arcane symbols and chanting for hours on end. Satanists often don't seem to have large congregations that can pony up weekly money offerings, nor can they run something like a bake sale to raise money so any expense needed for devil worshiping probably has to come out of the followers own pocket. What with all the candles, ceremonial daggers and custom fit hooded robes that must run into a good chunk of change. And for what? More often than not the followers get hosed by Lucifer or some other demon in the end anyway. I think movies like Azarak are trying to make Satanism terrifying and mysterious but instead they end up making it look more tedious than going to church.
Credit for Azarak being better than it probably should be goes to director Shimako Sato. A sense of trapped isolation runs through the story instead of a realization that 90% of the movie is shot at the same high school location. Misa comes across as slightly alien because of her powers and her hesitation at becoming too close to those around her instead of coming across like a young model with no previous acting experience. Thanks to Sato's ability to keep the movie moving Azarak comes across as a much better film than it's modest budget and origins would suggest. General competence in telling a story may not seem like that big of a trick but it's more than a number of large budget movies I've seen recently can pull off.
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