the cabin ad pillar

Stroll through any of Tokyo’s larger train stations this week and you’ll inevitably come face to face with the vision of a disheveled teenage girl, trapped behind a layer of glass crying for your help.

As part of the promotional campaign for “multi-layered” horror movie Cabin (released in the west in 2012 as The Cabin in the Woods), a series of frightening advertisements is currently being displayed on 160 screens across 14 stations in and around the Tokyo area. For many, though, the ads were simply too scary, and an advertising standards agency has made the unusual step of asking for them to be toned down.

Although they have now been altered, the ads originally showed a female figure covered in blood, banging on the glass and begging for passing commuters to save her. After several members of the public said that they found the images a little too disturbing, the colour of the images was tweaked so that blood and gore could no longer be seen. Even in their dull black-and-white state, though, the ads are still pretty eye-catching.

the cabin ad the cabin ad 2

Public reaction to the intense ads ranges from “way too scary,” to much blunter but equally honest comments such as “What the hell is that!?” uttered by shoppers and commuters passing by.

If you’d like to frighten your children by telling them that government has started imprisoning people who don’t brush their teeth in the walls of public spaces, you can take them along to Ikebukuro, Shibuya, Ebisu, Shinagawa, Tokyo, Akihabara, Ueno, Mitaka, Kokubunji, Hachioji, Akabane, Urawa, Omiya, or Yokohama station to see the ads, which will remain – in their slightly altered yet still unnerving form – until Sunday, 10 March.

he cabin ad title

In the meantime, we’ll leave you with the trailer for the movie itself. While it’s by no means a production that will go down in the hall of cinema fame, the film’s alternative take on the genre alone makes it worth checking out. Cabin premieres in Japan this coming Saturday.

Source: Narinari (Japanese)