When I watched the UK premiere of Yuriyan Retriever’s Mag Mag on Saturday, the director’s name was relatively new to me, although well known in Japan and more recently in the USA. I had read it was going to be a “weird and wild satire of J-Horror”, which I’ve been fond of since discovering Urotsukidōji, Ring and Tetsuo in my younger days; and although fond, I’ve never become an aficionado, so I went into this screening excited and enthusiastic, eyes wide open, but somewhat blind. I enjoyed Mag Mag a great deal, though I cannot help but think I would have got more out of it if I was more familiar with its inspirations. So here’s what I can tell you, from the point of view of a J-Horror admirer, rather than expert.

Steven Sheil and Meli Gueneau introduced the film to the audience carefully giving very little away (though Meli mentioned a strong theme of obsession); just as they had with One Cut of the Dead in a similar festival slot in 2018. We had already seen Transcending Dimensions, and so something odd or experimental wasn’t going to stand out particularly: the Mayhem audience is often ready for anything. Just like One Cut of the Dead, Mag Mag actually started in a familiar way; familiar to those of us who have seen a few Asian horror films, at least: school kids spreading warnings (a viral game, perhaps) about a curse, a ghost of the “wailing woman” variety. This one is not so much holding a grudge, but having been through the torment of unrequited love during her life, she has been taking it out on a series of high school boys. Similarly to Ring, after the scene is set with a death and some exposition, we move on to Sanae (Sara Minami) looking into other related deaths… and this is what leads into the main plot.

I say “plot”, though the structure is not as linear as all that. Mag Mag is presented in the form of chapters, each focusing on a different protagonist; and some don’t appear to link together until close to the end. Indeed one break between chapters appears to be a commercial leading into a reality show; though the young people housed in that show do turn out to be players in another tale of this curse. It’s interesting to see that the unrequited love being bemoaned by Mag Mag can be seen in high school crushes, senior/college age relationships and public-facing “influencer” groups; and as the film progresses, we can see the importance of obsession that Meli told us about in these young people’s lives: some are obsessed with looking cool to their peers, some are obsessed with the objects of their affection.

As you may have gathered, the story of Mag Mag (the original title translating as “Disaster Woman” or “Misfortune Woman”) meanders somewhat: it was only as the strands came together, with Sanae finally grasping the source of the curse, that I understood the film actually had a coherent plot after all. Written by Eisuke Naitô, an established film director in his own right, I can’t help wondering how the film may have been different if he had directed this himself, as he as other titles. Yuriyan Retriever is known in her comedy for surreal physical humour, and this certainly came across in some scenes. I would consider Mag Mag to be an affectionate homage to Japanese horror films in some of its style and content, but the humour and brightness certainly softens the chills one would usually expect.

The chills that can be found in Mag Mag lie in the anguish behind the curse itself: flashbacks show an overweight girl Yurika (Aoi Yamada) whose crush leads bullies against her. Sanae herself is more than a little bitter, too, against both Hiroshi (Ôshirô Maeda) who she longs for and his chosen partner Rumi (Mai Fukagawa). There is back-stabbing and deceit amongst the older set of roommates, too. All of the victims – unusually for a horror, not just Japanese – are male; and although the power lies with women in this film, there are no female allies to stand up for Yurika: it’s almost as if the creatives behind Mag Mag have no problem with tossing her aside, as her bullies do, hardly the “feminist” stance that the film appears to show on the surface. Or perhaps Retriever is using her directorial debut to protest against her ex-boyfriends.

Watching Mag Mag with the Mayhem crowd was an interesting experience, too: there were certainly shocked gasps when the bullying first became severe, and it was apparent that nobody really knew who to root for. Many of us were swept along with yonkey’s bouncy music and unreal kitsch colours, laughing in disbelief in the later scenes which truly did become surreal. Personally, I felt that at nearly two hours long, Mag Mag could have benefited from a couple of its chapters being shorter, but I was still engaged right to the end. Not everyone was: on the way out, I heard people ask each other “what on Earth did we just see?”. But here’s a thing: obsession is rarely understood by those who don’t share it. Retriever may have intended to use Mag Mag as a satire of or tribute to classic J-Horror tropes; but what I saw was what a minefield romance, affection and simply being liked can be for young women.