BY ALEX DAVIS
Dir. Guy, Japan, 40 mins
Fresh from the fabulous experience of Starburst Film Festival in Manchester, Film Gutter is going to have a small hand in another film fest this May, namely Derby Film Festival. The opening weekend of the event from 4th-7th May is the Paracinema weekend, celebrating and highlighting films from outside of the mainstream, and the 5th May sees a very exciting night for fans of extreme cinema, with five movies screening throughout the night at the Paracinema All-Night Takeover! Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing the focus to the movies on offer, which will include two we’ve already reviewed (and loved!) on these pages – Kasper Juhl’s stunning Your Flesh, Your Curse as well as the wild experience that is American Guinea Pig: Song of Solomon. Which leaves us three very different movies indeed to look at – Ron Bonk’s She Kills, Jonathan Lewis’s Black Devil Doll and today’s focus, Guy’s fascinating short, Difficulty Breathing. Now any of our regular readers will be aware that we dip our toes into Japanese cinema quite a bit, because it has a huge repertoire of movies to select from and a reputation for producing some of the darkest, most challenging and flat-out strangest movies out there. Difficulty Breathing is certainly a worthy entry to that pantheon – simply shot, and following a single unnamed female lead, this is a distilled tale of one woman’s descent into insanity. In the opening we see her out on the street, but as she goes on her way she finds herself drawn back to dark memories of a rape that she suffered. Haunted by those events, she rushes back to the safety of her house – and only rarely for the rest of the movie does she ever leave it. As she begins to run out of food, and suspect she is pregnant as the result of her sexual attack, her mind begins to unravel and the darkness that she felt she could keep outside soon enough inveigles its way into her home… There’s no doubt that Difficulty Breathing is film-making on a very small budget, but it is generally effectively done. The lead actress gives a strong performance and her fear and paranoia is believable from start to finish, and the camera angles are certainly interesting also – at times they get extremely up close and personal, which just adds to the discomfort for the viewer. There’s very little dialogue, but it’s not really necessary at all in a story focused on isolation and reclusion. You also have to give a tip of the hat to the sound design – the first thing that rolls across the screen is a message saying ‘Play Loud’ and that’s certainly a piece of advice worth heeding! There are lots of simple but clever little devices in play here that genuinely added an audio element to the horror. For all that, there were a handful of reservations. The beginning of the movie is certainly a slow build, and it’s only really in the last 15 minutes that we begin to build a real head of steam – I wonder if it could have potentially been a touch shorter and tighter all things considered. Some of the effects don’t look all that great, although that’s a relatively minor quibble in a film that is much more about psychology. The ending felt a little abrupt to me as well, although to some audience members it might feel like the perfect fit. I felt like a bit more steering in that direction would have been beneficial personally though. With all the above said, what you have here is certainly a worthwhile way to spend forty minutes, especially for those who love their extreme cinema dark, disorienting and a little abstract. In fact, that might just be three things that Japanese horror cinema does better than anyone… RATING: 7/10. A movie with effective atmosphere, a good central performance and some well-chosen sounds and camera angles, Difficulty Breathing shows plenty to like and is likely to appeal to fans of Japanese horror in its wider sense. It’ll certainly be interesting to see what kind of reaction it gets in front of an audience! The Paracinema All-Night Takeover offers five extreme horror movies as well as a host of 80s action movies, all for one great ticket price! For more information, visit The Derby Quad Website You can also get a ticket to see Song of Solomon individually, which is the first movie in the all-nighter, at Song of Solomon at The Derby Quad 
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