The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window – Movie Review

Mikado can see ghosts and spirits around him ever since he was a child. Frightened by his vision, he tries to repress this supernatural ability, preferring to lead an ordinary life as a bookstore clerk. During a fateful encounter, he is approached by a mysterious stranger. Hiyakawa is an exorcist who knows about Mikado's unusual talent and wants to recruit him as an assistant.

Hiyakawa does freelance jobs for the police, helping them collect clues and solve cases by channelling the undead. With Mikado as his assistant, he believes his investigative work will improve. Unlike Mikado, Hiyakawa is very open and confident about his ability to exorcise ghosts. However, Hiyakawa does lead a rather unconventional lifestyle, admitting that he has no family, friends, or romantic partners. He doesn't have many memories of his childhood or his past either.

Although Mikado agrees to the strange job with the lucrative pay, he is uncomfortable with the gruesome nature of his work. As an exorcist's assistant, he tags along Hiyakawa in brutal murder cases that are assigned by Detective Hanzawa. Mikado is constantly exposed to dead corpses, angry ghosts, and dark voodoo everywhere. Fortunately, Hiyakawa is always nearby to protect him, using his psychic ability to ward off the evil spirits.

During one of their investigations, Mikado links a series of murders to a menacing high school girl named Erika Hiura. Erika has powerful psychic abilities, which she uses to conduct evil misdeeds. Although Mikado wants to stop her, Hiyakawa doesn't seem keen to go outside the boundaries of his assigned work. Their job is to collect clues from the supernatural world, not to catch a killer.

Nonetheless, Mikado goes behind Hiyakawa's back and launches a clandestine investigation with Detective Hanzawa anyway. Detective Hanzawa warns Mikado that he doesn't fully trust Hiyakawa, even though they have been working together on cases for a long time. Mikado begins to question Hiyakawa himself, as he picks up signs that his shady business partner might not be on the side of justice.

It's hard to write a review about The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window when I have no idea what was happening in the movie. Sure, I can make some educated guesses about the storylines, but I was pretty lost as somebody who hasn't read the manga. The complex plot is never adequately explained, leaving me confused every time a character uses one of their supernatural abilities. They suddenly know telepathy, soul-binding, or whatever inexplicable powers with no explanation.

The movie progresses rapidly, and you can sense its eagerness to cram in as much plot as possible. This approach is unsuccessful, making an already complicated story even more difficult to follow. At some point, I just gave up trying to decipher the events. These incoherent scenes are never going to make sense to me, so why bother?

The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is carried by its slick production values. This is a very stylish horror film that maintains a dark and gritty atmosphere. While I never reached the point of being really scared by the bloodshed, I appreciated how much thought and care was put into the visual presentation. For all its narrative shortcomings, The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window makes up points in terms of ambience. Some cinematic scenes look absolutely gorgeous on screen.

From a BL perspective, The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window failed completely. There's virtually no BL content in this film adaptation. The most you get is some platonic physical contact, since the two leads don't demonstrate any romantic feelings for each other. I was amazed to discover this was adapted from a yaoi manga, because the relationship between Mikado and Hiyakawa doesn't come across that way in the movie. You can expect to see lots of dismembered bodies and bloody massacres, but you won't get a single glimpse of romance.

Maybe I would've enjoyed The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window more if I actually read the original source material beforehand. I'm aware there's an anime series in the works, hopefully translating better in this format. As a movie, however, The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window just feels too rushed, too incoherent, and too joyless. I finished the film feeling unfulfilled, not understanding precisely what I had just watched.

Summary