BANNED FROM BROADCAST: SAIKO! THE LARGE FAMILY

What this altogether fascinating found footage Horror movie from Japan proves is that the land of the rising sun was and is the epicenter of the format.  Toshikazu Nagae’s BANNED FROM BROADCAST: SAIKO! THE LARGE FAMILY (Nippon no daikazoku Saiko! The Large family: Hôsô kinshi gekijôban) debuted in 2009, the same year as the iconic found footage opus PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (appropriately, Nagae helmed a Japanese remake of that film in 2010) but had an audacious take that suggested found footage filmmaking was already old hat in Japan, and ripe for reinvention.  The film isn’t without flaws, but I say Nagae deserves points for effort.

SAIKO! THE LARGE FAMILY was a late entry in the Nagae directed BANNED FROM BROADCAST found footage Horror series, of which there exist seven films.  The second of them, 2004’s BANNED FROM BROADCAST 2: A DAMNED BIG FAMILY (Hōsō kinshi 2 aru norowareta dai Kazoku), served as a direct prequel to SAIKO! THE LARGE FAMILY, and must be viewed for a full understanding of the latter.

The subject is the Ura family, consisting of Sumio (Hideaki Kawashima), who’s paired up with (but has yet to marry) Tsukasa (Junko Takai) after her husband “mysteriously disappeared,” and her ten children, profiled in a mock-documentary by one Veronica Addison (playing herself), an amiable middle aged Canadian woman concerned about Japan’s declining birth rate.  What she uncovers is a rather strained dynamic, with Sumio physically abused by his teenage stepdaughter Rie (Rimi Fukunaga) for no evident reason (a fleshing-out of Rie’s motivation is provided by A DAMNED BIG FAMILY).

Tsukasa’s oldest son Gouki (Junpei Utsu), meanwhile, refuses to come out of his room except to bathe, while her eldest daughter Ringo (Sayaka Fukita) has absconded to a big city brothel.  When Tsukasa’s second son Ryuta gashes his head in a fall Ringo returns home, Gouki is moved to venture out of his room, and Sumio and Tsukasa finally decide to get married.  All would seem to be right with the family until Rie once again beats up her step-father, precipitating a fraught but ultimately healing confrontation between Rie and Sumio—who becomes convinced the house is haunted, with the apparent culprit being a cursed photograph (a full explanation of which again requires a familiarity with A DAMNED BIG FAMILY).  All appears to end well, however, and Ms. Addison concludes her documentary on a blandly optimistic fade-out, with much of the family in the midst of a seemingly blissful fishing trip while Tsukasa recovers from an unseen accident in a local hospital.

On the surface there’s admittedly not a whole lot here to take in.  The film plays for the most part exactly like what it purports to be: a documentary about a relatively normal (albeit extremely accident-prone) Japanese family.

It’s entirely up to the viewer to pick out the horrific elements.  Those elements do exist, albeit in throwaway shots (including a glimpse of two of the Ura children intently whispering about something) and in the corners of the frame (in which dark figures are often glimpsed in windows and doorways), and also the seemingly innocuous final image of Gouki wielding a baseball bat (which seems rather unnerving in light of the knowledge that his mother has been severely injured in a never-shown “accident”).

The supernatural elements, which were at the forefront of A DAMNED BIG FAMILY, are brought up roughly an hour into the film and then abruptly dropped—as if they were being used as a ruse to distract us from a more immediate Horror residing on the mortal plane.  A scene of Tsukasa zealously tending to her garden would appear to be especially suspicious, with the woman acting as if there’s something buried that she’d rather we not see (with her first husband, let’s not forget, having disappeared under mysterious circumstances).

As mentioned above, the film is flawed.  If anything, the illusion of reality so integral to the found footage format (which extends to the blurred-out signs and faces) is a bit too well maintained, with handheld camerawork that’s so wavy and undisciplined it’s near-impossible to make much of anything out, a problem given that detail is so important (plus the English subtitled version neglects to translate the writing seen on Gouki’s door, which explains a crucial part of the core mystery).  Again, though, Toshikazu Nagae deserves credit for attempting such a provocative take on the found footage genre, even if he didn’t entirely pull it off.

Vital Statistics

BANNED FROM BROADCAST: SAIKO! THE LARGE FAMILY (Nippon no daikazoku Saiko! The Large family: Hôsô kinshi gekijôban)
Fuji Television Network

Director: “Veronica Addison” (Toshikazu Nagae)
Cast: Veronica Addison, Hideaki Kawashima, Junko Takai, Sayaka Fukita, Chiharu Ariga, Junpei Utsu, Rimi Fukunaga, Ayato Kosugi