Kakurenbo [カクレンボ] (2004)
AKA Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek
Starring Junko Takeuchi, Makoto Ueki, Masami Suzuki, Ryo Naito, Mika Ishibashi, Akiko Kobayashi
Directed by Syuhei Morita
I think someone tried to follow the hype over Voices of a Distant Star and throw out another short indie anime. Kakurenbo however doesn’t quite meet that level of quality. It’s a half-hour horror film that draws a parallel between the children’s game of hide and seek and the basic horror concept of victims being chased around by monsters. This is furthered by the Japanese language. In English, the player that searches for the other kids is simply called “it.” Stephen King associations aside, it doesn’t really sound very scary. But the Japanese word for that player is “oni,” which translates to “demon” in English. Suddenly the idea of bloodthirsty demons chasing children around becomes a lot more apparent, and that’s pretty much the plot of this film.
There’s not much to distinguish the plot from any number of other horror films. There’s a bunch of kids that go off to the neighboring town to play hide and seek, only to find that they really are being chased around by demons, and the poor fools get picked off one by one. The main character is looking for his sister who vanished when playing the game before, and his buddy tags along to help out. The plot is fairly predictable, and if I delved any more into it, it would probably spoil everything, assuming I haven’t already. However, I did find the explanation for the ending to be interesting, even if the ending itself was obvious.