{"id":801069,"date":"2026-10-13T08:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T08:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/801069\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T08:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T08:52:09","slug":"mag-mag-review-giant-female-ghost-loves-people-to-death-in-japanese-comedy-horror-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/801069\/","title":{"rendered":"Mag Mag review \u2013 giant female ghost loves people to death in Japanese comedy-horror | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in the 90s and 00s, Japanese horror (or \u201cJ-horror\u201d if you want to save on syllables) was much admired<\/a>, reasonably widely distributed and sometimes remade in other languages<\/a>. They never actually stopped making them in Japan, but the results don\u2019t 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\u2019s so remunerative at the box office.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it\u2019s 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<\/a>, an irrepressible character whose dadaist shtick got her on America\u2019s Got Talent twice, makes her directorial debut with this satirical ghost story which sends up male misogyny and women\u2019s obsession with romance alike.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\u2019s petite female beauty norms. When Mag Mag falls in love with a cute guy, he\u2019s done for, because she will pursue him to the death \u2013 a passion that is finally consummated with fatal throttling and sucking out the limerent object\u2019s<\/a> eyes (a step beyond merely boiling the family bunny \u00e0 la Fatal Attraction).<\/p>\n

Mag Mag\u2019s backstory doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s a twist in store, however \u2013 one that really upends viewers\u2019 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\u2019s victims, shows that women are just as capable of toxicity as men if they put their minds to it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s 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<\/a> at his most deranged. Somehow it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Mag Mag is on digital platforms from 19 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in the 90s and 00s, Japanese horror (or \u201cJ-horror\u201d if you want to save on syllables) was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-801069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}