Pet Peeve (2013)

A student moves into a new town to start university. Finding work at a restaurant and meeting a woman named Yoko, he notices a strange customer (a man with a hat that hides his face) who sits down in a corner. He is warned not to go near him by Yoko but his curiosity prevails and he goes over to ask him if he needs anything. When the man says nothing, the student goes back to serving more customer but when he turns around the strange man has disappeared. This is only the beginning of mysterious happenings that takes place in the town.

This is a bizarre if not an imaginative J-horror based on the manga Fuan no Tane. I have no idea who chose the English title for the movie as I believe the proper translation for the manga is Seeds Of Anxiety which sounds much better than Pet Peeve (I actually think that’s quite a poor title and it doesn’t fit in with the movie’s plot). There are many bizarre images in the movie such as a man who has been cut in half after a motorbike accident and is still alive. How a person can be cut in half after falling into a bush I don’t know but that’s just one of the odd things which you’ll see in the movie. Other strange happenings on show here is two men seeing a woman walking in front of them. They think she looks hot from behind with her short skirt and are desperate to see her face but when they go to have a look they are confronted by nothing but straw! Yes, you’ve read it correctly – a straw face!!! There’s also a sticker which looks like an alien face that marks people for death whenever it sticks on that person’s property, some weird like eyeball worms which seep out from under a road and get crushed by cars and trucks and ghosts with twisted faces.

There are several plots taking place in the movie and everything is out of sequence so you’re constantly going back and forth between the past and the present. This may confuse some viewers and nothing is really explained why all these odd occurrences are taking place. I suggest you do exactly what I did – forget trying to work things out and just prepare yourself to be scared by what transpires onscreen. The movie makes for a refreshing change from the usual J-horrors and there’s not a hint of a long-haired female antagonist around either! It’s also unpredictable as you’re never really sure what’s going to happen next. There’s an ominous atmosphere of fear and dread pervading throughout the movie. The female student Yoko knows more than what she’s letting on which may be due to the fact that she went through a very traumatic experience as a child when her family was murdered by an unknown assailant in a very gruesome sequence and the student is haunted by the mysterious man with the hat who stands outside his apartment all the time. As the movie had a small budget, the CGI effects look uneven at times (the man sliced in half looks particularly bad). The acting is adequate though nobody really stands out. I suppose it’s Anna Ishibashi that I thought was the best as Yoko who is quite a complex character and goes through many mood swings during the movie. She flies off in a temper all of a sudden in certain scenes for no apparent reason – don’t know if that was because she was frustrated by her boyfriend’s (the new student) actions or not. The movie is directed well enough by Toshikazu Nagae and credit to him for coming up with something a little bit different from the norm.

Provided that you don’t really care about the jumbled up plot, you should have a fun time watching this movie. There are some really disturbing images which gives you the creeps and a couple of scares to be had. All I can say is just give it a whirl and see what you think. Some might like the bizarreness of it all and others might dislike it because of the unclear plot. I enjoyed it anyway.

Sadako’s Rating: 3 stars out of 5

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