What is it about deeply rural places and deeply strange religion and sex? In the United States, one has the stereotype of the hills of Appalachia as refuges for snake-handling preachers and cousin-marrying hillbillies. In Japan, one has the mountains of Shikoku in Masato Harada's "Inugami," where ancient taboos rule, ancient enmities live and the dreams of a middle-aged spinster are disturbed by visions of the child she had with her own brother.
The U.S.-Japan comparison comes to mind so readily because Harada, who has worked in the U.S. film industry (he produced the Japanese versions of the "Star Wars" trilogy) and shot films for the Shochiku studio on U.S. locations ("Painted Desert," "Eiko to Kyoki"), is among the Japanese directors most influenced by Hollywood codes and adept in interpreting them for Japanese audiences. The silk-smooth helicopter shots that begin "Inugami," taking us ever deeper into the wilds of Kochi Prefecture, are similar to the ones that introduce us to the jungles of "Jurassic Park." There's the same impression of visual scale and consummate craft, combined with the thrill of swooping into the heart of darkness. (The film swooped into the hearts of the Berlin Film Festival's programmers, who chose it for their competition this year.)
There is also the same sense that, despite his flair for capturing local color, the director is an outsider looking in, through a romanticizing pop-culture lens. The local film industry comparison is less with Shohei Imamura, who played the glinty-eyed anthropologist in his excursions to Japan's outlands, than with Kon Ichikawa, who unashamedly pumped up the obake yashiki (haunted house) theatrics in his inaka murder mysteries. Harada injects the film with the right creeping sense of dread and delivers shocks with the right goose-pimpling impact, but he is also fond of the overly abrupt transition and the overly loud sound effect. Be prepared for a few jolts on this particular cinematic theme-park ride.