Mag Mag review – giant female ghost loves people to death in Japanese comedy-horror

Back in the 90s and 00s, Japanese horror (or “J-horror” if you want to save on syllables) was much admired, reasonably widely distributed and sometimes remade in other languages. They never actually stopped making them in Japan, but the results don’t seem to get as much crossover exposure as they used to. That may be because we have quite enough horror getting made closer to home, especially since it’s so remunerative at the box office.

Nevertheless, it’s good to see evidence that the genre keeps evolving in Japan just as it does everywhere else, and there is something tangibly fresh and kicky about this low-budget horror-comedy amalgam. Made by comedian Yuriyan Retriever, an irrepressible character whose dadaist shtick got her on America’s Got Talent twice, makes her directorial debut with this satirical ghost story which sends up male misogyny and women’s obsession with romance alike.

Told in a series of interrelated chapters, the plot explores encounters with Mag Mag, a female ghost notable for her height (two metres), wild mane of hair, and generous proportions that go against Japan’s petite female beauty norms. When Mag Mag falls in love with a cute guy, he’s done for, because she will pursue him to the death – a passion that is finally consummated with fatal throttling and sucking out the limerent object’s eyes (a step beyond merely boiling the family bunny à la Fatal Attraction).

Mag Mag’s backstory doesn’t get fully fleshed out until the last section, but Yuriyan rather implies she was a fat high school girl bullied into killing herself by mean classmates who therefore deserve persecution. (There’s a twist in store, however – one that really upends viewers’ assumptions about bullying victims.) Meanwhile, the obsessions of another young woman called Sanae (played by Sara Minami, delivering a truly crazed comic performance), who is also in love with one of Mag Mag’s victims, shows that women are just as capable of toxicity as men if they put their minds to it.

There’s a bizarre sequence in which Sanae slathers her entire body in lubricant and forces her way through a sphincter-like orifice located where the mouth should be in a giant portrait of the guy that she is obsessed with, which is worthy of cult Japanese trash auteur Takashi Miike at his most deranged. Somehow it’s not surprising to learn that Miike is one of the backers of Mag Mag, a sign that the older generation of Japanese horrormeisters are passing on the torch.