Reflective Encounters

“Jayden Rathsam Hüa’s Sushi Noh operates in the grand tradition of schlocky ‘80s horror, balancing an Spielberg-esque relationship between a precocious child and her obnoxious uncle with Joe Dante-style gonzo horror concepts before a red-soaked giallo finale. The film leans into genre thrills with absurd body horror (you probably won’t have an appetite for fish after this) and ancient mythic totems. Yet, underlying the film is an interesting clash between Eastern and Western cultures and sensibilities. After all this is an Australian production preoccupied with Japanese aesthetics, exploring them through American and Italian genre conventions.

Everything is played broad in this film, from the dingy apartment chock full of stereotypical Asian paraphernalia, to Felino Dolloso’s boorish Uncle Donnie, who growls through his words. Though the film relies on horror tropes, with a final girl confrontation at the end, what lingers are the attempts at approximating Asian culture for its cartoonish world. Especially interesting as director Rathsam Hüa is Asian-Australian. Early in the film a commercial for the titular “Sushi Noh”, an automated sushi maker with a mad jester’s face, plays, which cycles through every conceivable stereotype for Japanese commercials: broken English, bright graphics and random humour. It causes one to wonder how these stereotypes remain in the cultural lexicon. For Asian-diaspora directors indulging in these tropes in the West, the question may well be where the line is between subversion and perpetuation?”

— Matthew Chan