House [Hausu]

Screen/Society & the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute present a special 35mm screening:

A work of dense visual and technical complexity, House (Hausu) is perhaps best remembered as a psychedelic, cinematic pop-up fairytale of the Grimm brothers variety, but Obayashi’s darkly comic fable of seven schoolgirls is deceptive in its simplicity. While the girls’ stay in a haunted house results in a series of sinister, stylized, and undeniably silly slashings, House subtly explores the wartime trauma their parents’ generation endured. A midnight movie turned cult classic, House – with its hypercinematic unreality of candy-coloured skies, optically printed collages, and rapid fire editing – is undoubtedly best experienced on film.

"A head-on collision between The Evil Dead (1981) and Yellow Submarine (1968) – a fevered flight of horror-fantasy like no other." — Sarah Cleary, BFI

"Disney had his seven dwarves, Kurosawa his seven samurai. For Obayashi (with the help of his eleven-year-old daughter, Chigumi, who provided many of the story ideas), it was seven teenage damsels in distress—Carrie raised to the seventh power, Suspiria spiraling ever upward into some psychedelic seventh heaven. House is a film that must be seen to be believed, and then seen again to believe that you really did see what you think you saw." — Chuck Stephens, Criterion