Director: Takashi Shimizu
Country: Japan
BBFC Certificate: 18
The J-Horror wave of the late 90’s and early 2000’s was a significant cultural event for cinema, bringing Western audiences into contact with the likes of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and Dark Water as well as Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On series of films. There is a specific aesthetic which defines these films, a horror that feels personal, almost familial and a narrative that often revolves around a haunted place, a cursed object or, more often, a ghostly, horrific child. In 2023 Shimizu revisited the J-Horror genre that made him famous with his diptych of films Sana and its sequel Let Me Hear, deciding to bring not one but all three of these key narrative principles with him to create two films which pay homage to the J-Horror era; Arrow Video’s latest release bundles both of these films together in one compelling package.
Sana
Starring: Alan Shirahama, Ryôta Katayose, Hayato Komori, Reo Sano, Mandy Sekiguchi, Yûta Nakatsuka, Ryuto Kazuhara, Akari Hayami, Tomoko Hoshi
Screenplay by: Rumi Kakuta, Takashi Shimizu
Running time: 102min
Year: 2023
A private investigator, Tsugutoshi Gonda, is hired to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of the singers in popular Japanese boy band Generations. As he digs deeper into the case, however, he begins to uncover a strange story of a cursed song, a mysterious death at a high school nearly twenty years prior and the strange girl who seems to connect all of these bizarre events – Sana Takaya.
We’ve all caught ourselves doing it – humming a tune we heard somewhere. Maybe it was on the radio, maybe it was playing in a shop or maybe even someone we walked past in the street was also absent mindedly humming it. But what if that catchy melody you heard is actually a curse and you’ve now become the target of a malevolent spirit? What if everyone else who hears this tune will also be targeted in such a way? It’s a typical J-Horror conceit which, in the case of Sana, begins with the discovery of a mysterious audio cassette in the archives of a radio station. This idea of the discovery of a cursed tape is very evocative of Ringu and is just one of the ways in which Sana plumbs the depths of J-Horror nostalgia, but by setting the story in the modern day director Shimizu merges both analogue and digital with some intriguing results.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this story is the casting of the pop group Generations who play fictionalised versions of themselves. It’s an interesting concept which doesn’t require familiarity with the group and never feels like it gets in the way of the story as a whole, also adding a degree of authenticity to the concert scenes included in the film. The band members themselves are also decent actors in their respective roles, getting the bulk of the scares as they’re all slowly taken over by the cursed tune.
There’s also a subtle subtext of the younger generations playing off the older, analogue generations with a sort of rivalry between Generations singer Alan Shirahama and the older Detective Gonda who he sees as an out of touch relic of the 80s, a sentiment that is suggested is shared by Gonda’s own, seemingly estranged daughter.
Obviously the draw here is the horror imagery and Shimizu doesn’t disappoint, pulling in multiple unsettling ideas as the characters begin to experience visions of the girl who made the tape, Sana Takaya, and Gonda starts to piece together just what might be going on. It’s a somewhat slow burn story but the horror concepts gradually ratchet up from merely spooky to bizarrely unsettling, leading to a finale that puts Tomoko Hoshi’s Sana into the pantheon of creepy Japanese ghost kids alongside the likes of Sadako and Toshio.
Sana is also a fantastic looking and sounding film, slickly shot and directed by an expert of the genre, it manages to evoke simultaneously both a feeling of homage and evolution. It’s perhaps not as much of an instant classic as those it’s emulating, with the real love connection to Generations blunting it’s teeth a little, but for J Horror fans hankering for the feel of those early 2000s films, Sana is worth a watch.
Sana: Let Me Hear
Starring: Nagisa Shibuya, Ikoi Hayase, Soma Santoki, Towa Araki, Maya Imamori, Shun Aoi, Tomoko Hoshi
Screenplay by: Rumi Kakuta, Takashi Shimizu
Running time: 125min
Year: 2024
After her boyfriend is left comatose following a traffic accident, Honoka Kimijima (Shibuya) takes on a summer job at a local school teaching supplementary classes. Following a horrific incident in which a student dies, an event mysteriously echoing one which happened 20 years prior, Honoka begins to hear her students humming a mysterious tune and realises there is a girl in the class who shouldn’t be there – a girl called Sana Takaya.
Released one year after the first Sana movie, Let Me Hear focusses more on Sana as a character, featuring her more heavily in the story and exploring events in her life that the first film suggested to provide deeper context and understanding. With several cast members returning, also in expanded roles, and scenes from the first Sana played out in more detail, this is very much a “Part 2” story.
Rather than having the mystery feel of the first film, Let Me Hear further explores the concept of Sana’s cursed melody as well as the long term effects coming into contact with it has on the characters and leans much heavier into some darker, more surreal imagery. As the story progresses we discover Sana’s obsession with death and self harm and her recordings of the “final noise” that animals and people make in death. It lends a very different flavour to the story over the first film and ends up having an arguably stronger narrative and horror vibe that skews close to the surrealist concepts of horror Manga author Junji Ito.
There’s also a much stronger feel to the smaller cast of Let Me Hear; while Generations appearance in the first film was never truly obtrusive, there was a feeling by the end that their presence blunted some of the more overt horror aspects. With a much more cinematic cast, Let Me Hear dips into some very unsettling places with Tomoko Hoshi fully able to embrace the twisted character of Sana Takaya.
Shimizu also, once again, plays fantastically with sound and vision, with haunted locations bending reality and Sana’s cursed melody playing throughout, a tune you’re guaranteed to get stuck in your head. A scene in which our main characters listen in full to Sana’s cassette of death sounds is particularly unsettling, especially as it provides deeper context to scenes from both films.
As with the first Sana, this doesn’t entirely feel like an instant classic, but to have a veteran of the genre back in action, it’s definitely worth a watch for fans of J-Horror.
Bonus Features
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentations
- Original Japanese DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio and stereo audio for both films
- Optional English subtitles for both films
- An interview with director Takashi Shimizu and assistant director and horror consultant Nao Kawamatsu
- J-Horror: Then and Now, a brand new retrospective on the J-Horror genre by critic and Japanese cinema expert Amber T.
- Making-of featurette for Sana
- Alternate ending and previously unreleased scenes for Sana
- Making-of featurette including previously unreleased scenes for Sana: Let Me Hear
- Original theatrical trailers and teasers for both films
- Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork for both films by Tom Fournier
- Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the films by critic and Asian cinema expert Hayley Scanlon
Arrow have released a very good value double pack of both Sana films, available in a brilliantly presented limited edition collection with some gorgeous artwork. There’s a decent selection of special features across both films with the J-Horror video essay from Amber T being well worth a watch – be warned though, this features on the disc for the first film but includes clips from the second which do spoil some plot points and scares.
While not as essential as some of Shimizu’s classic, more seminal works, The Sana collection is a very easy recommendation for viewers looking for a new slice of J-Horror fun.