It's the longest Kowasugi film to date. Its first 38 minutes don't feature Kudo and Ichikawa, instead being the self-shot narrative of a lonely man called Sakurai. He's not too bright (my Japanese is more fluent than his) and he doesn't have a job, a girlfriend or any kind of purpose in his life. He meets a mysterious girl in the mountains and this is part of her conversation with her:
- TSUGUMI = Mister, what do you do for a living?
- SAKURAI = Well... I'm kind of doing self-study. Basically, I don't do anything. I play games. I surf the Internet. I watch movies. I have a camera at home, so I shoot with it in my spare time.
- TSUGUMI = So you don't work?
- SAKURAI = From time to time I do some short-term work. Three or four times a year. A few weeks at a time.
- TSUGUMI = And your parents don't say anything?
- SAKURAI = They don't say anything special. Only, for example, to wash the dishes. I don't like that very much. They're embarrassed of me. And they've already accepted it.
- TSUGUMI = And you want to live like this forever?
- SAKURAI = What kind of question is that?
- TSUGUMI = Answer.
- SAKURAI = I hadn't thought of that.
- TSUGUMI = No motivation.
- SAKURAI = I don't think about it. When my parents die, I'll think about it.
Tsugumi is played by Rie Kuwana, who played a different role in the 4th Kowasugi (about Hanako of the toilet) and will play yet another role in the 2023 film. This has happened before in this series (albeit more often for roles like "kappa"), but unfortunately recognising people from earlier films has been a plot point.
All this might feel mildly uncomfortable. Sakurai lacks social skills and he's about to decide that he likes Tsugumi. Is he a stalker? Is he abnormal? Is he an unreliable narrator? (This series has already played with the idea of unreliable witnesses, but this film takes it further than usual.) We can't answer any of those questions, but we know he's getting in over his head with Tsugumi and her mother. We've seen the film's title. I'll give you a clue: they're not werewolves.
Eventually, he contacts Kudo and Ichikawa. I'm not sure that's a great idea. Kudo points out Sakurai's inexperience with women and offers to give him lessons in love techniques and how to chat up girls. I laughed. Ichikawa immediately points out the problem with this, i.e. Kudo's personality. Here's an example of his romantic approach:
"It's nothing but trouble with these girls, huh? But if that's the case, then you have no choice but to subdue her by brute force."
It's a romance. A scary J-horror romance with green-monochrome night filming and monsters that drag you into the dark, but still a romance. Sakurai's serious about Tsugumi and he'd do anything to be with her. This gets tested more stomach-turningly than with most people who say they'll do anything. (Sakurai's also a fan of Youkai Ningen Bem, ironically a few years before the franchise got revived for a 2019 anime TV series and a 2020 movie. That made me smile.) Kudo and Ichikawa do good. There's even a happy ending, albeit a freaky reality-busting one. I quite liked this film.
