Mari Asato

is a Japanese film director.

Primarily known for the film Ju-On: Black Ghost (2009), part of The Grudge film installments, her other films include the politically undertoned Samurai Chicks (Dokuritsu Shôjo Gurentai) (2004), the cinematic rendition of Boy From Hell (2004), Twilight Syndrome: Dead Go Round (2008), Ring of Curse (2011), Bilocation (2012) and Fatal Frame (2014).

Early life Mari Asato began her career as a photographer working as an apprentice under Kiyoshi Kurosawa during the filming of Barren Illusions in 1999. A few years later she worked under Hiroshi Takahashi as an assistant director on the production of Sodom the Killer (2004). It was after this time Asato began directing her own films, mostly contributing to already well-known horror franchises. In 2011, she entered her most successful and active phase of film-making, continuously releasing sequels and feature films.

Composed on the basis Freudian themes of human desire, Bilocation or 'the state of being in two places simultaneously' is the overriding theme of the film. Starring a veteran of Japanese horror, Asami Mizukawa, the film draws multiple hidden parallels to doppelgänger tropes and religion, specifically the story of Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis.

The film often references John Everett Millais's famous painting Ophelia, the mid-Victorian piece in which Shakespeare's famous character Ophelia, from his play Hamlet, drowns herself in a stream due to madness. Asato's style is directly referencing the eerie beauty of Ophelia's corpse floating in the river. She has been referred to as creating an 'Ophelia' world in rural Japan.

Filmography Jigoku Kozō (2004) Dokuritsu Shôjo Gurentai (2004) Twilight Syndrome: Dead Go Round (2008) Ju-On: Black Ghost (2009) Gomennasai (2011) Bilocation (2014) Gekijōban Zero (2014) Hyouka: Forbidden Secrets (2017) Under Your Bed (2019)