Warning: the following contains spoilers for Occult. Do not read before seeing the movie.

Shiraishi Koji used real names, locations, and the found footage sub-genre to create a sense of realism in his movie Occult. That realism adds to the tension and ability to unnerve the audience. We have to remind ourselves it isn’t real while we watch fearfully as the characters step closer and closer towards the horrors ahead of them. However, a technique that he deploys that I haven’t seen discussed is realistic synchronicity.

Fated Encounters

“Synchronicity is an acausal principle and can be defined by a meaningful coincidence which appears between a mental state and an event occurring in the external world.”
~Carl Jung

Synchronicity is a term coined by psychologist Carl Jung. It’s used to describe meaningful coincidence or occurrences that feel orchestrated by fate or the divine. It is a phenomenon studied by those interested in parapsychology and the supernatural because it is believed that by following synchronicity we can get closer to sighting and study of paranormal phenomenon. Many believe that they are signs or omens that the researcher is on the right path.

In Japan, the concept of synchronicity is not unknown. Not only is it likely that the director has heard of Jung’s widely-known concept but Japan’s own rooted philosophy called goen.

Goen is loosely translated to “fated encounter.” It refers to encounters that lead to long, meaningful relationships. It is often discussed when the topic of the “red thread of fate” comes up in Japanese media. This philosophy originates from China and claims that we each have a soul mate, connected by an unseen red thread and no matter the circumstances, distance, etc you are destined to be with that person. However, goen is more than just romantic relationships. It also includes friendships and business associates.

Occult demonstrated goen in the connection between the film maker, Koji (here I use his given name to refer to the self-named character that director Shiraishi plays), and the interviewee, Shohei Eno. However, it also demonstrated synchronicity in other ways and, as a student and fan of paranormal research and documentaries, I feel this adds to the realism of the film.

Fated Events

“The problem of synchronicity has puzzled me for a long time, ever since the middle twenties,when I was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious and kept on coming across connections which I simply could not explain as chance groupings or “runs.” What I found were “coincidences” which were connected so meaningfully that their “chance” concurrence would represent a degree of improbability that would have to be expressed by an astronomical figure.”
~Carl Jung

Synchronicity shows up in Occult in a series of events that, if seen on their own, might be viewed as supernatural but benign. It is not until they are pieced together by the documentarians that the malignant truth is revealed.

First we have the beginning of the movie. The documentary film makers are focusing on a serial stabbing at a resort location and the audience feels as if the main character will be -, who was filming the attack. She is positioned as a perfect final girl – pretty but shy, experiencing a traumatic event but brave enough to return to it years later. The final girl trope is quickly dropped, however, to focus on Eno, an unhoused man who was stabbed by the assailant. The documentary crew seem ready to move on from Eno if it weren’t for a strange statement about not holding what happened against his attacker but instead being grateful because of all of the miracles he sees daily. A statement that unravels the story into the bleak path it takes.

However, before we reach that story path, there are plenty of synchronicities to piece through.

The Manga Artist and the Director

As a student of synchronicity, one of my favorite things about it is how it uses mundane people rather than “experts” in the supernatural. In the documentary Hellier (see my review about The Unbinding by the same documentarians), which is a fantastic look at synchronicity, we get simple acts of hikers with balloons, people visiting gas stations, and school teachers suddenly whisked away to prison delivering synchronistic messages to the documentarians that change their whole journey.

In John Keel’s book, The Mothman Prophecies, we get the story of Woodrow Derenberger and Indrid Cold. Derenberger was a sewing machine salesman. He wasn’t a government agent or a psychic. He was just a dude on a drive who had a supernatural experience that would reverberate through cryptid and UFO legacy.

Occult presents a manga artist, Watanabe Peko, and a horror director, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, as their supernatural experts who are themselves baffled by their findings and experiences. Their presence, seeming disconnection, and presentation of important information is a nod to how synchronicity really works in the world.

The Symbol and the Rock

The greatest example of synchronicity driving this narrative is Koji’s experience at Kutoro Rock (Nine-Headed Spine Rock). When Koji first visited the rock formation, he found nine leeches attached to his leg. Upon revisiting it, the scars from those leeches began to bleed around the same time they find a stone carved with petroglyphs that match the birthmark on the original stabbing perpetrator and the scars on Eno. The synchronicity here being that Koji, who could not have known he would later be involved in documenting Eno and the connection between the man and the leech god, Hiruko, that the rock was dedicated to, had visited and had this experience around the same time that Eno was stabbed. 

The use of the synchronicity isn’t just to tell the information about the rock and help the documentarians make connections between what is happening to Hiruko. They could have simply had one of the characters recognize the drawing from a picture in a book or a postcard. Having the connection be to Koji himself and the time period is using synchronicity to lend a layer of veracity and add to his connection, or goen, with Eno and what is going on.

The Hand of a God Himself

Then we have Eno himself. He wasn’t born touched by a god nor was he out looking to contact the divine. He showed up at the sighting of a serial stabbing and was chosen either by his attacker or Hiruko the leech child. Eno later explains he went to the location because he heard a voice through the tv. However, even turning the tv on, hearing and listening to the voice, reaching the specific location just in time, and it all being caught on camera to later draw in his ally, Koji – all of this is synchronistic.

The stabbing that catalyzed this terrorist happened three years prior to his own terrorist attack. During this time he seems to be entirely reliant on the whim of a job placement company to make money. This money is what he is saving up to buy items needed for his terrorist attack.

There is a long discussion between Eno and Koji about how Eno waits from 6-9am every morning to see if there is work and how work is hard to obtain. We see multiple occasions where work doesn’t come through. Yet, during these three years, he was able to get enough work to accumulate over seven-hundred-thousand yen. This is a shock to the documentarians who know him to be unhoused and struggling to scrape together funds to eat or for a place to sleep at night. What isn’t mentioned is how Eno is, in this way, reliant on synchronicity of work turning out to obtain money at all for his goal. Not just work but places to eat and sometimes food. In this way, he is entirely reliant on synchronicity or fate (or the divine) to pull through.

Fated Horrors

“Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see it.”
~Carl Jung

One of the themes in Shiraishi’s work, in Occult and A Record of Sweet Murder as well as others, is showing the audience a person who has done horrific things for a reason and letting said audience decide if the characters’ reason is worth the death and horror.

In Occult, the synchronicities add to this theme. Everything lines Eno up to his terrorist attack and Koji’s filming of said attack. There isn’t a moment that doesn’t feel guided either by fate or the divine (Hiruko). With that additional string laid in the tapestry of the movie, the struggle of whether or not the terrorist attack could have been prevented by one action or event grows ever more complicated and therefore more emotionally and mentally effective.

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