Yoshitaro Nomura's 1978 film, "The Demon," is one that I've wanted to see since 2014, when it was prominently reviewed in The Guardian. It's also one of those films with very disturbing subject matter, which is why it took me the better part of a decade to actually work up the courage to watch it. You always hear about the films that they could never make today, and "The Demon" is one of these, about three young, unwanted, illegitimate children, who are suddenly left in the care of their biological father.
There are films about child abuse that get made, many of them very dark and depressing, but I can't think of many where the abuse is so starkly portrayed that it seems impossible the young actors involved weren't traumatized in the process. There are very few scenes in "The Demon" with physical violence, the most obvious one being a horrifying incident where the screaming stepmother force feeds a bawling toddler rice. However, the verbal and emotional abuse is rampant, and even the milder scenes of the children being coldly ignored are gutting. The oldest child, Riichi (Hiroki Iwase) is only five, his sister Yoshiko (Miyuki Yoshizawa) is three, and the youngest is still in diapers. You have to wonder how well children that young can differentiate between what's going on in real life versus what the adults around them are only pretending is going on.
And all the adults in "The Demon" movie are horrible. Ken Ogata plays Takeshita, a printer with money problems who finds that he can no longer support his mistress, Kikuyo (Mayumi Ogawa). Unable to take care of the children alone, Kikuyo unceremoniously dumps them on Takeshita before disappearing for good. Takeshita's infertile wife Oume (Shima Iwashita) is furious, and refuses to do anything to take care of the children, only interacting with them to punish and berate them. She complains constantly about their existence, and is soon plotting ways to get rid of them. As for Takeshita, he tries to be a good father at first, but he's weak-willed and has few options. His wife is able to wear him down, until he does the unthinkable. The film depicts extreme acts, but at the heart of it is a very clear-eyed examination of why child abuse happens. Takeshita has no resources and no support. The younger children are at an age when they need constant care. Takeshita, who we learn was also an unwanted child, desperately wants to do right by them, but ultimately gives in to his wife's demands.
I'm going to spoil what happens in the rest of the film here, because I think it's better to warn curious viewers of exactly what they're in for. The baby dies of illness brought on by malnutrition, despite Takeshita doing his best to save him. Yoshiko is abandoned at a crowded observation platform in Tokyo Tower, being too young to know her address or her parents' names. As for Riichi, Takeshita takes him on a outing, waits until he's asleep, and then drops him off of a cliff into the ocean. However, the boy miraculously survives and the police apprehend Takeshita, who is overcome with remorse. These sequences are very suspenseful and the direction is very good, especially the picturesque scenes at the seaside cliffs. However, the most impactful parts of the movie are the earlier ones in Takeshita's household, because the abuse and the neglect we see depicted are so appallingly normalized. We rarely see casual cruelty to small children onscreen in such a realistic fashion.
I can find plenty of faults with "The Demon." The big one is the depiction of the women in the story, who are very two dimensional. Oume in particular is a shrieking harpy who is very easy to hate, while all our sympathies are directed to Takeshita. The final bit of the story with the police coming to the rescue is contrived in the extreme, and wildly melodramatic. The film would have been much more powerful without the tearful confessions or the sage police detectives shaking their heads about "young people these days." I won't get into what I think of the filmmakers subjecting the child actors to some of the situations depicted in the film, but surely it wouldn't happen now without causing an uproar.
But that said, this is a film that's going to haunt me. It's a lot more honest about childhood horror and the dark side of parenthood than I was expecting, and I'm not going to be able to stop thinking about some of those images. The most wrenching moment in the whole film is a poignant shot of Yoshiko, staring at her father through the crowd as he's abandoning her, the expression on her face totally unreadable.
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