The Plot That Tripped Over Its Own Feet
Sabu’s Dancing Mary (2019) sounds like it should’ve been a fun, weird little ghost story. A haunted dance hall? A forlorn spirit named Mary who can’t stop busting spectral moves? A meek civil servant forced into a supernatural adventure with a high school psychic? That setup screams quirky Japanese fantasy—like Spirited Away if it were written during a caffeine crash.
But instead of delivering supernatural whimsy, Dancing Mary feels like watching a tax auditor and a teenager go on a road trip through every possible shade of confusion. The movie staggers through its two-hour runtime like a drunk ghost in tap shoes—earnest, maybe, but totally lost on the dance floor.
The Premise: Bureaucracy Meets the Beyond
Our protagonist, Kenji (Naoto), is a civil servant so bland that even ghosts can’t be bothered to haunt him directly. When his department is tasked with demolishing an old dance hall to make room for a shopping mall (the true villain of modern Japan), he discovers the job comes with one small complication: it’s haunted by the restless spirit of Mary, a dancer who refuses to leave until she reunites with her lost lover, Johnny.
So far, so good — this could’ve been a fun ghostly rom-com about helping spirits find closure. Instead, Sabu gives us an odyssey through tedium. Kenji, joined by Yukiko (Aina Yamada), a psychic high schooler with a personality flatter than her fringe, sets off to find Johnny. What follows is a meandering quest involving yakuza, gambling dens, spiritual portals, and so many awkward silences you start to wonder if the sound editor fell asleep.
The Characters: Paper Dolls in a Poltergeist Play
Let’s start with Kenji. He’s supposed to be the “timid everyman thrust into chaos,” but Naoto plays him like an office printer: monotone, functional, and prone to jams. His emotional range stretches from mild concern to mild confusion, which makes watching him interact with ghosts about as thrilling as watching someone reboot a Wi-Fi router.
Yukiko, the teen psychic, is equally underdeveloped — not in the “mysterious clairvoyant” way, but in the “did the writer forget to give her a backstory?” way. Her powers appear when the plot demands it and vanish when Sabu remembers he has yakuza to awkwardly cram into the next scene.
And Mary, the titular ghost? She’s supposed to be tragic and ethereal, but instead she looks like she wandered off from a period drama and ended up in the wrong movie. Her tragic love story with Johnny, the missing gambler, is less Casablanca and more Ghost: The Pachinko Edition.
The Tone: Dancing Between Genres Like a Possessed Metronome
Sabu is known for blending absurdity, violence, and sentimentality, but Dancing Mary feels like he accidentally mixed all three in a blender without putting the lid on. One moment you’re watching a heartfelt ghost lament her lost love; the next, there’s a random yakuza subplot involving a bulldozer. Then there’s a weird spiritual montage that looks like it was filmed through a fogged-up aquarium.
The movie doesn’t just shift tones — it violently changes species. It wants to be a horror film, a comedy, a romance, and a bureaucratic satire all at once, but it never commits to any of them. It’s like watching Beetlejuice rewritten by someone who’s only seen half an episode of The X-Files.
The humor is particularly baffling. There are long stretches where you can’t tell if you’re supposed to laugh or call for a wellness check on the script. Characters make awkward jokes that hang in the air like ghosts of better dialogue.
The Pacing: Slow Waltz into Oblivion
Clocking in at nearly two hours, Dancing Mary feels twice that long. The story lurches forward like an arthritic waltz — slow, uneven, and constantly stepping on its own feet. Every time you think the plot is about to get going, Sabu hits pause for a philosophical conversation about the afterlife that sounds like it was written by someone who skimmed a Ghost Whisperer fan forum.
There’s no real momentum. The central mystery of finding Johnny never feels urgent. Even the ghosts seem bored, as if they’re haunting the living out of sheer obligation. By the midpoint, you’re not rooting for the characters to succeed — you’re begging the demolition crew to show up early and put everyone (including the audience) out of their misery.
The Visuals: When Drab Meets Dull
For a film about dancing, Dancing Mary has all the visual flair of a municipal zoning hearing. The cinematography is lifeless, dominated by beige offices, grey skies, and fluorescent lighting that could give insomnia to vampires.
The ghost effects are… fine, if you’re grading on a 1990s television scale. Mary’s spectral appearances are occasionally eerie, but mostly she just flickers awkwardly like a buffering video. You keep waiting for a moment of visual transcendence — a scene that captures the beauty of lost love or the melancholy of lingering spirits — but what you get instead looks like someone forgot to adjust the brightness setting.
The Music: Jazz Hands of the Dead
You’d think a film centered around a dancer’s ghost would feature a killer soundtrack. Something rhythmic, haunting, maybe even a little tragic. Instead, Dancing Mary’s score sounds like royalty-free background music for an elevator in limbo.
When the music isn’t forgettable, it’s distracting. In one scene, an emotional exchange between Kenji and Yukiko is underscored by what sounds like an upbeat theme from a cooking show. The tonal whiplash is real — one moment you’re supposed to feel spiritual awe, and the next you’re waiting for Gordon Ramsay to yell “It’s RAW!”
The Ghost of Better Movies
Watching Dancing Mary is like being haunted by the memory of what it could have been. The premise — reconciling the past through love, loss, and urban development — could’ve been a thoughtful meditation on grief and progress. Instead, it’s a supernatural slog that confuses “melancholy” with “monotony.”
There are flashes of inspiration buried beneath the mediocrity: an occasional visual metaphor that almost works, or a glimpse of Sabu’s trademark absurdity peeking through the fog. But these moments are too few and far between, smothered by the film’s glacial pacing and tonal confusion.
You can tell the movie wants to say something profound about life, death, and the human condition. Unfortunately, whatever message it had got lost somewhere between the dance hall and the editing room.
The Finale: Curtain Call for Common Sense
By the time Kenji and Yukiko finally help Mary reunite with Johnny (who turns out to be far less interesting than the film treats him), you’re not moved — you’re relieved. The emotional climax lands with all the grace of a collapsing shopping mall.
There’s a brief moment of sentimentality as Mary finally “dances” into the afterlife, but by that point, your empathy has been demolished along with the dance hall. You’re left staring at the credits, wondering if maybe you were the ghost all along — doomed to haunt your couch for two hours, waiting for something meaningful to happen.
Final Thoughts: “Dancing Mary” Should’ve Sat This One Out
In theory, Dancing Mary could have been a charming, bittersweet ghost story about love and letting go. In practice, it’s a supernatural sleep aid — a slow, tonally confused jumble of half-baked ideas wrapped in a beige government office.
It’s a movie about dancing that has two left feet. A film about ghosts that lacks spirit. A story about love that never makes you feel a thing.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 haunted dance shoes.
Because while Mary might be restless in the afterlife, the audience will be comatose in this one.
