The Happiness of the Katakuris

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The Happiness of the Katakuris
Region 1 DVD cover
Directed by	Takashi Miike
Produced by	Hirotsugu Yoshida
Written by	Kikumi Yamagishi
Starring	Kenji Sawada Keiko Matsuzaka Shinji Takeda Naomi Nishida Kiyoshiro Imawano Tetsuro Tamba
Distributed by	Vitagraph Films LLC (US)
Release date(s)	February 23, 2002 May 16, 2003
Running time	113 min.
Language	Japanese
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The Happiness of the Katakuris (カタクリ家の幸福, Katakuri-ke no kōfuku^?) is a 2001 film directed by Takashi Miike, with screenplay by Kikumi Yamagishi. It is loosely based on a Korean film, The Quiet Family. The film is a surreal horror-comedy, which includes claymation sequences, musical and dance numbers, a karaoke-style sing-along scene, dream sequences and Hitchcockian symbolism.

The film won a Special Jury Prize for its director at the 2004 Gérardmer Film Festival.

Tagline:

The hills are alive with the sound of screaming!

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Katakuris are a four-generation family of failures (grandfather, father and mother, children and granddaughter, who narrates the film) who use the father's redundancy pay to buy a guest house in the country. Somehow, each of their guests ends up dead – by suicide, accident or murder - and once they have made the decision to save their business by burying the bodies and concealing the deaths, they find themselves sucked into a nightmare of lies and fear (not helped by the arrival of the daughter's con-man boyfriend, an escaped murderer with police in hot pursuit, and an erupting volcano).

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Kenji Sawada	Masao Katakuri
Keiko Matsuzaka	Terue Katakuri
Shinji Takeda	Masayuki Katakuri
Naomi Nishida	Shizue Katakuri
Kiyoshiro Imawano	Richâdo Sagawa
Tetsuro Tamba	Ojîsan Jinpei Katakuri
Naoto Takenaka	Television Reporter
Tamaki Miyazaki	Yurie Katakuri
Takashi Matsuzaki	Utanômi