Céline Roustan
Making sushi can be an ordeal, so to save time Donnie buys a machine that makes them. Yummy Yummy Sushi Time! Or not… His young niece Ellie does not trust this weird new kitchen appliance and when you see what it is capable of you’ll understand why! Buckle up for a wild ride from writer/director Jayden Rathsam Hua in Sushi Noh—an unsettling, gross, but damn fun short film that may make you unable to look at sushi in the same way!
Children’s nightmares are a fountain of imagination and insane scenarios, yet coming up with an evil sushi-making machine is still quite random. When we asked Rathsam Hua what triggered his inspiration he confessed that he reflected on his nightmares as a child. “The world was intimidating, and anything that felt odd or threatening reverberated into something bigger, darker, and monstrous in my mind” he shared with us. Ellie, the young protagonist, projects all her fears and anxieties from the world she lives in onto that strange-looking machine, and from there, her imagination takes over. “Sushi Noh is an exploration of the weird, absurd, and grotesque- qualities that ignited my subconscious then and continue to do so today” Rathsam Hua added.
Felino Delloso as the uncle, Geneva Phan as Ellie, and that damnable sushi-making machine!
The film starts on a high note, as we get introduced to Ellie’s world and see her having fun, and dancing. Unfortunately (for her at least), that does not last long. Only 50 seconds of the film elapse before reality hits, with her uncle acting like an asshole. Mean and unbecoming, we quickly understand that this is his default state and get a sense that she is trapped with him. In that environment of anxiety, the appearance of the sushi-making machine is instantly coded as bad news, and the film adopts the pacing of Ellie’s mind as her imagination takes control of the narrative. Beginning as discomfort and transitioning right to terror, the machine turns into the physical manifestation of Ellie’s irrational fears, discomfort, and tense, even abusive, relationship with her uncle.
Fascinating and captivating, Sushi Noh proceeds to juggle many subgenres within the horror/midnight arsenal: gross body horror, slashers, and psychological thrillers, but layer each with a heavy dash of humor as well. Produced at The Australian Film Television & Radio School (AFTRS) Rathsam Hua crafts the unsettling universe of Ellie’s imagination with a host of collaborators and fellow students that include DP Sam Steinle, production designer Calum Wilson Austin, editor Gus O’Brien, composer Scott Majidi, and sound designers Sean Doyle and Sam Grimshaw. The team’s stated goal was to “innovate upon Australian genre cinema by incorporating creative principles found across East Asian horror cinema”, and the images, sound, and rhythm of the film all contribute to successfully trapping us in the spiraling escalation led by that damn sushi-making machine! Truthfully, it did not look like it could be trusted…
Ahead of its online debut, Sushi Noh experienced an impressive festival run with notable stops at Encounters, Seattle, Melbourne, and Palm Springs. Rathsam Hua is currently working on two feature films, one based on this short, and another titled Matriarch, and a new short film titled, Belloe. After typing all of that I’m a bit hungry! I know the machine was evil and all, but sushi does sound pretty good…