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A special kind of horror hides in morality plays. These stories often look at people who put a lot of effort into formulating a strong argument for murder. Husbands and wives tend to dominate in this space. What makes them the perfect subject for this is their capacity to conjure a deep hatred for one another. They turn marriage into a prison they need to break out of the moment they stop being able to stand each other. In their minds, the only option left open at this point is murder.
Masasumi Kakizaki’s Hideout stakes its horror claim here, in a story about a husband that simply wants a fresh start. Problem is, he thinks his wife is standing in the way of this. And then there’s the old man that lives in the cave.
The manga, which was originally serialized in Weekly Big Comic Spirits magazine back in 2010, follows Seichi and his wife Miki as they go on vacation to a remote island. Seichi is struggling with his writing career after suffering a very personal family tragedy that upended his entire world. Miki blames him for what happened.
Seichi plans to murder his wife while on vacation, hoping to find a good hiding spot for her body in an isolated part of the island. It’s all for a chance at a life reset. Unfortunately for him, the couple stumbles upon a cave that’s home to some very strange people that seem to thrive in darkness. Things get progressively complicated from there.
Hideoutis constantly reminding the reader that Seichi arrived at the conclusion that his wife needed to die all by himself. It wasn’t just a flash of homicidal inspiration or something he was forced into. It’s an idea film noir explores well, and one that horror frequently borrows from.
Corrupted morals stories dig further into the uglier aspects of human nature. They don’t look for redeeming qualities in people and they rarely entertain the possibility that anyone will be able to save themselves. Kakizaki proves to be well-suited to explore the themes that come out of this type of narrative and he never losses sight of them, even when things venture into gorier territory more freely.
In terms of tone and atmosphere, fans of Jack Ketchum’s 1980 book Off Season (about a group of friends from New York that go on vacation only to be terrorized by inbred cannibals) and Zach Cregger’s 2022 film Barbarian(about the horrors that reside beneath a house in the neighborhood of Brightmoor, Detroit) will find a lot to like in Hideout. The cave that Seichi and his wife step into looks like a place that not only welcomes bloody violence but also has a long history of it, an approach to setting shared by the two stories mentioned above. It mirrors the couple’s marital deterioration, highlighting the complete absence of empathy and civility between them.
Abrams Bookshas published Hideout as a complete collection that includes the original color pages featured in the initial magazine run. It’s the perfect time to pick up a copy. It might be a harrowing read, but it’s a stimulating one that dares readers to question their own moral inclinations should they ever be pushed to a certain limit. Characters as flawed as the ones Kakizaki created demand nothing less.
