白塔之光

　　Following her mother’s death, manga artist Soriya travels to her ancestral home in Phnom Penh, with hopes of reconnecting with her distant family and using the visit as inspiration for her work. All goes well initially. Renting an apartment in Metta, a rundown Khmer Rouge-era housing complex, her visit to her maternal relatives finds her welcomed with open arms. But Soriya’s waking hours in the apartment and its surroundings are punctuated by terrifying, bloody visions, almost as though she were a conduit for horrors of the past wanting to seep into the present.　　Inrasothythep Neth and Sokyou Chea’s blood-chilling psychological horror explores a personal and political past through the present, transforming a characterful space into an insidious environment. Surrounded by modern high-rises, this decrepit structure, with its brutalist architecture and peeling surfaces, is a relic from a dark period in history whose painful memories it has absorbed. In tracing Soriya’s ominous journey back to her roots, Tenement hints at a necessary reckoning with Cambodia’s political past without overplaying its historical dimension. It’s an impressive work from a woefully underrepresented national cinema.

　　The nightmare was about a demonic possession. A long time ago, there was an evil in a small town and it was jealous of the girl and would never let her go, since the devil loved the girl. One night, the evil raped the girl and she became pregnant. After months the girl could not hide her baby, her father figured her secret out and clapped the girl in irons and locked her room door. But the evil put the gun to her father' temple and saved the girl. The father had a stroke and had been sleeping on the bed for three months and died. Time went on and the girl brought a child into the world. Naturally, people who were living in the village heard the story and they did not want to see neither the girl nor the baby since when the baby was born, plants dried in the field, fishes lost in the lake and people had prayed to the god for rain, but nothing changed in the village. People got so angry, dug a hole in front of the fountain, put her into the hole and threw stones at her face. The girl died soon after. The evil went off the deep end, took a revenge of the village and killed everyone except two sisters because the evil wanted them to take care of its baby...

　　科學萬能の現代、だが未だ地球上には解明できぬ謎が殘されている……。東北地方に、婆羅陀魏山神という神をまつる村があった。訪れた調査隊はそこで生ける神?バラダキを目撃する。それは湖に棲息する中生代の恐竜?バランであった。急遽出動した自衛隊の攻撃を逃れ、バランは空へと舞い上がる。やがて姿を現したバランは、浦賀水道から東京上陸を狙う。３６ミリ機関砲さえ跳ね返すバランに対し、自衛隊はダイナマイトの２０倍もの威力を誇る特殊火薬をもって対抗するが……。ミニチュアワークは相変わらず冴えているが、“未知の謎”を主題にしているわりにはストーリーが平板。冒頭からバランの全身を出し、その破壊力の描寫に終始している感がある。資料によっては「東洋の怪物」のサブタイトルも見受けられるが、フィルム?クレジット上には存在しない。