Japanese comedians do crazy stuff to get on TV. In 1998, a comic known as Nasubi was deposited naked in an apartment and told he could exit when he had accumulated ¥1 million in sweepstakes prizes. Fifteen months later he accomplished this feat and emerged from isolation, still naked, but a national celebrity.

A similarly bizarre situation befalls the protagonist of “Stigmatized Properties,” billed as the latest shocker from veteran horror master Hideo Nakata, but also a dark comic glimpse into the stranger corners of the entertainment business. Nakata, who is best known for his seminal J-horror “Ring” films, struggles to bring off this oil-and-water combination: The suspension of disbelief required for horror dissipates when the characters return to the cold, cynical daylight of their workaday lives.

Nonetheless, the film is based on the real-life experiences of Tanishi Matsubara, a comic who has made a career of living in “stigmatized properties” — apartments where sad and terrible things happened, suicide and murder among them. But the reality of the paranormal phenomena Matsubara presents to his audience is, shall we say, open to question. The film hypes its otherworldly entities even further, to the limits of credibility and beyond.