Imagine waking up in a dark concrete crawlspace, bleeding from your stomach, barely enough room to move, no memory of how you’ve arrived there and no memory of where you came from. That is the situation Shinya Tsukamoto’s protagonist in this claustrophobic short film finds himself in.
What I Liked
Shinya Tsukamoto
Tsukamoto directed and starred in this film. I’m happy to say he accomplished both tasks! His performance as the unnamed protagonist captures the terror he experiences at being trapped in the macabre maze and forces the audience to feel exactly what he feels. The expressions of pain, sorrow, fear all come across as authentic and for a film that reveals virtually nothing about it’s protagonist, Tsukamoto does a great job of making me fear for this man and hope for him to escape the maze. As a director he keeps the camera close to his character, placing us directly next to him. Close-ups of his face create an intimate relationship between the audience and this man who struggles through these sadistic surroundings. He also keeps lighting to a minimum. There is just enough to make out the main character and some details of the rooms surrounding him but little in the way of understanding where exactly he is. The director opts for a (literally) dark setting to increase the viewer’s anxiety. The bizarre layout of the maze coupled with lack of clear lighting creates a nightmarish and surreal environment that is horrifying and yet difficult to look away from.
Waking Up vs. Falling Asleep
Each time the protagonist passes out, he awakes to find himself in an even worse scenario. After his initial wake-up our protagonist takes a moment to try collecting his thoughts before crawling through the endless tunnels until he passes out. He wakes up in an even smaller space, standing upright, his mouth forced open by a pipe running along the wall, not enough room to tilt his head back, teeth scratching along a pipe, barbed wire and spikes on the ground. He makes his way down the corridor until he sees the end of the pipe and a widening in the walls where he can finally find more mobility. Unfortunately freedom from the pipe offers no respite as a large sledgehammer is constantly ejecting itself through a window banging against the wall. Luckily the man makes it past the hammer only to see a group of shivering people through another window. The people look upwards pleadingly before something begins striking them down, butchering them. Our hero slides down into another passageway where he passes out again. He wakes up only to find himself swimming through red-tinted water, body parts floating everywhere, with little room to keep his head above water.
It’s clear that, in this case, falling asleep is a bad idea. You’ll only wake up in a worse predicament. This film definitely has a dream-like quality to it. Or rather a nightmare-like quality. The setting is so surreal at times the character believes himself to be in a dream. When he finally takes a moment to rest he begins hallucinating a mist that turns into fish swimming through water. A woman’s voice whispers “I’m sorry”, then describes a dream where she woke up alone in a dark room. “A dream of being awake?” the man asks. So what is Haze saying about being asleep vs. being awake? I think every time the protagonist passes out or falls asleep he is punished for attempting to escape reality. When he sees the fish and hears the woman’s soothing voice he is becoming more and more delirious. Fantasy and reality are blurring to the point he believes only through dreaming can he escape the nightmarish reality he’s trapped in.
Pure Terror
There is little to no plot. Normally I’d say this works against a film but Tsukamoto is more interested in forcing the audience to experience the fear and dread the protagonist feels all throughout his ordeal. And he does a damn good job of it. This movie is all about atmosphere, questioning what’s going on, and pure primal fear. We never get a clear idea of what exactly is happening and why because the protagonist never fully wraps his head around it. He speculates as to what might be going on (Is he being indoctrinated into a cult? Has some rich lunatic put him there for entertainment? Is he a prisoner of war?) but no answer is given. Answers are unimportant here. What matters is the terror experienced within the moment. That is what makes Haze such an effective little horror film.
What I Didn’t Like
Haze runs a couple of minutes longer than it should. After waking up surrounded by water, the man swims through body parts until he finds an opening above him. He climbs towards the exit as the water rises, threatening to drown him. He escapes into what looks like an office break room where a woman lies bleeding to death; a wound on the same area of her stomach as the man. A quick flashback reveals the man and woman standing in another room together while their voice-over talks about escaping together. The man crawls towards her as he sees a phone lying a few feet away. He grabs the phone to call for help before the screen cuts to black. And on that puzzling note, the director leaves us to ponder what the heck we just watched.
I like ambiguous endings but my problem with this one is that it didn’t add anything to what came before in the film. For the entirety of Haze up until the last few minutes we are following a man struggling to survive a twisted maze. The film goes on a minute or two longer than it should have. The real emotional resolution is in seeing him escape the maze, not whatever I was supposed to feel regarding his relationship to this new character introduced at the last minute who I know nothing about. Just a strange way to end an otherwise great short film. I would have been satisfied if the screen cut to black as he takes a few breaths after climbing out of the maze.
Aside from the extra couple of minutes at the end, Shinya Tsukamoto’s claustrophobic horror is a great film that forces the audience into fear and anxiety as they watch the unnamed protagonist fight for survival. With a runtime of only 24 minutes, Haze is definitely worth a watch.
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