The Big Picture

House of Sayuri
explores themes of cultural heritage, identity, and resilience.
The film is smart, complex, and frightening, overcoming any flaws in tone to still strike fear.
Strong performances enhance these tonal shifts, providing humorous and frightening moments.

Moving into a new home is always two things: an exciting event characterized by new possibilities, and a stressful one beset by a constant stream of new considerations. Sometimes these considerations are simple, like dealing with new landlords, parking spaces, or HOA fees. Other times, the new residents find there’s a person living in the walls or an angry spirit destroying their apartment zen. Here, a Japanese family’s new home comes with an unexpected resident: the angry ghost of a murdered girl. The pressures of the angry ghost become too much, escalating until tragedy strikes in Koji Shiraishi’s new J-horror outing House of Sayuri. It’s a genre-bending outing, with some skilled scares and conceptually hilarious comedic moments.

A home with a dangerous ghost is a J-horror staple, from the ghosts of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 classic Kwaidan to Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (whose ghost can invade yours, courtesy of VHS magic) or Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge (whose house becomes cursed itself). It’s terrain that modern J-horror titan Koji Shiraishi knows well, from the excellent Noroi: The Curse or his own take on Ringu / Ju-On lore in the horror-comedy crossover Sadako vs. Kayako. In House of Sayuri, the sins of a home’s previous family bleed into its current occupants’ lives, with devastating consequences. It’s a scary genre-bender with both effective scares and some adept comedic moments, but the wild tonal swings and certain character arcs don’t always land. Still, it’s a J-horror outing worth watching.

House of Sayuri (2024) Release Date August 23, 2024 Director Kôji Shiraishi Cast Ryoka Minamide , Hana Kondo , Zen Kajihara , Fusako Urabe , Kitaro , Kokoro Morita Runtime 108 Minutes Writers Kôji Shiraishi , Mari Asato Expand

What is ‘House of Sayuri’ About?

Dreams come true for the Kamiki family when they finally find themselves able to purchase a comfortable house in the countryside. It’s the perfect place for a thriving family… at least until a ghost shows up. Then come voices from the shadows and, eventually, possessions. What begins as a spectral anomaly builds in menace and violence, threatening every family member until it’s finally time to challenge the terrifying entity. It falls to the eldest son Norio (Ryoka Minamide) and grandmother Harue (Toshie Negishi), whose dementia subsides to defend the home against the ghastly terror. In the process, the ghost’s horrific origins are unearthed, setting in motion a terrible reckoning with the entity.

House of Sayuri grapples with three interesting concepts: a family’s darkest sins are inescapable, the ones who suffer are often the innocent, and that maximizing one’s own life force gives perhaps a little protection from supernatural terror. An undeserving family suffering the supernatural effects of others’ sins is common in films involving a ghost-infested house, but here it’s used to provide a set of contrasts between the past and the Kamiki’s present. The latter are kind, silly even, so it’s easy to feel empathy for their growing unease. Simultaneously, the ghost’s various forms reflect its traumatic history well, cementing the spirit’s terrible connections to the past once the audience knows the home’s dark truths. It’s a detailed, well-conceived, and designed horror-thriller, where nothing’s arbitrary and everything hits its deeper lessons home.

‘House of Sayuri’ Is Frightening and Layered, but It Struggles With Tone Shifts
Image courtesy of the Fantasia International Film Festival

By and large, House of Sayuri rests on the strength of its characters and their performances. The entire Kamiki family are all grounded in solid performances, from the well-natured family vibes of the early film through the unsettling moments of terror as it progresses. Still, House of Sayuri is largely carried by Norio’s Ryoka Minamide, who boasts a wide range of emotional beats from the loving brother to the terrorized victim, before pulling himself together to fight the entity. His character does have a somewhat odd arc, in that his commitment to a life-affirming ethos (thanks to grandma, see below) interrupts the actual response to the tragedies that befall his family. This isn’t a fault of the performance, however, but rather a limitation of the scripting. Hana Kondo also excels as Norio’s youthful love interest Nao Sumida, a young girl touched by strong intuitive abilities who tries to prevent the family tragedy.

Once the story fully kicks in for the film’s second half (and it’s grandma’s turn to activate and fight), Toshie Negishi delivers a powerhouse performance. Faced with overwhelming ghostly terror, she commands Norio to toughen up and fight the dead entity with the power of their life force–she eats, smokes, and is merry, for tomorrow they fight the dead. Belligerently laughing at the sky, her intensity is matched by humorous dialogue (she proclaims they’ll get “Sweet revenge!” against the entity, a memorable exclamation if ever one exists).

House of Sayuri is unique among some of the more famous J-horror outings forits sweeping tonal shifts. At first, the growing danger of the apparition is shot with proper horror style: tense, suspenseful, and frightening with heavy consequences. The ghost’s forms are grounded in the narrative and capably utilized. Once grandma and Norio decide to fight back, it momentarily takes on a more comedic tone in a lifeforce-enhancement training montage. Grandma yelling at Norio to embrace life as he’s doing push-ups and roadwork to the sounds of funk music. Tai chi lessons, admonitions to sleep well, eat well, exercise well, and live well. It has a distinct Rocky vibe that may not fly in other supernatural horror films, but it really works here in a campaign to get revenge against a ghost. Where the film loses track of the tone, however, regards the heavy shift that follows.

Related ‘HEAVENS: The Boy and His Robot’ Review: This Mech Movie Has Flaws in Its Design | Fantasia 2024 This charming sci-fi falls short of its promise.

Grandma and Norio discover evidence that the haunting spirit is that of a girl who used to live in their house, Sayuri (played with a silent power by Haruka Kubo). Regular viewers of ghost horror features may guess that the spirit is attached to the home because of their past trauma in life, and they’d be right–the actual circumstances behind Sayuri’s inability to peacefully move on are bleak and tragic. Right before the reveal, Harue has a chance to interrogate Sayuri’s surviving family and interrogate she does (intensely, and to vibrant classical music). It’s over the top to draw out the spirit, but then audiences see the horrible things that happened which lead to Sayuri’s traumatic life and death.

The tone here is appropriately serious, and it’s reflective of the film’s overall command of tone in each scene. Tones shift regularly in House of Sayuri. When the tone is frightening, it’s properly horrific. When it’s whimsical, there’s an easy charm. When it’s serious, dramatic, and upsetting, it’s treated with proper seriousness. These tone shifts don’t swing wildly between scenes, but change over whole sequences. This works well for the most part, but at times it gives the impression that one’s watching a wildly different film every 15 or so minutes once it starts, a feeling that’s most acute in this segment.

House of Sayuri is a strong film, anchored by performances that memorably and capably excel regardless of the varied emotional extremes the plot demands. Koji Shiraishi has a strong overall command of tone over the course of the evolving narrative, landing memorable scares, charming comedic moments, and the gravity of tragic moments alike. Where it’s weakest is in the transitions and balance between these different segments and wildly divergent tones, at times feeling like one’s watching a series of wildly different short films. This progression also interrupts the character arc for Norio, though Ryoka Minamide otherwise showcases a strong command of the character’s various challenging emotional beats. These notes aside, House of Sayuri is a strong, frightening film and an engaging ride into J-horror territory overall (and if it doesn’t spark a series of films with Norio and Harue hunting ghosts, we all lose).

‘House of Sayuri’ is an Effective, Tonally Wild Haunted House Tour
Image courtesy of the Fantasia International Film Festival

For a simple haunted house tale, House of Sayuri manages to bring new experiences into a well-worn subgenre. The scares are effective, the cast performs well across the board, and Sayuri herself is equal parts frightening and tragic, her various forms showcasing different aspects of the ghost’s tragic life. It’s a smartly constructed film that’s broadly successful with specific segments (namely that epic life-affirming montage) that work extraordinarily well. That said, it’s not without some genuine issues. Some of the tone-shifting itself is a little ungainly in practice, and Norio’s character arc does need serious honing to work fully in the context of the character’s circumstances. Still, it’s a capable and engaging horror outing that will linger in the brain well past its runtime.

REVIEW House of Sayuri (2024) House of Sayuri is a smart, complex, frightening J-horror outing that’s successful despite difficulties in balancing tones.ProsRyoka Minamide gives a standout performance, while Toshie Negishi is exceptional as Harue.Kôji Shiraishi balances wildly divergent tones in different segments, each handled with care.The horror sequences are properly scary, thanks to thoughtful scene design and execution. ConsThe extremity of shifts between tones, and how the transitions occur, are sometimes jarring.The contrast between the weight of Norio’s experiences and his reactions to them feels odd at times.

House of Sayuri had its North American Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.