I finished the first seven Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! movies
I'm going to sound completely insane saying this about random direct-to-video movies I hadn't heard of even a week ago, but this series is some of the funniest shit I have ever seen. I thought my life had been changed by seeing Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie earlier this year... I think the seventh SKFK movie is honestly having a similar effect on me?? It's really tremendous stuff!!
These movies are really preoccupied with critiquing the entertainment business. That critique follows the same lines you often see Shiraishi exploring in his other work. It seems like he has tread and retread this territory constantly since his student days - he is very interested in sensationalism, the culpability of the cameraman, and the ways filmmakers exploit their subjects (and themselves). He's made movies which touch on these topics quite literally dozens of times across his career. It is practically the only thing he seems to make movies about.
But the way he hits this topic in the SKFK movies is just insanely good. The series is patient and slow in the beginning, but the last few movies in particular have such a momentum - and such a crass, explosive rage - that I was fucking blown away. As the series continues, it becomes much more high-energy, much sillier, but also more sentimental and preoccupied with its own lore. Somehow, this works. By the end, I was completely committed to these horrible characters. There's also some fourth-wall breaking which amounts to, probably, the best fourth-wall-breaking I've ever seen in my life. It hit me like a fucking truck.
I think you should watch these movies immediately, in the most "official" way you can - I watched the films on Youtube and I cannot really recommend the first four or so subtitle translations there. Movies 5-7 had better subs, though. I understand that there's also a Discord where you can get better subs, but I haven't explored it yet myeslf.
If you want to be a real freak and prepare yourself to understand a little more of what Shiraishi seems to be saying about himself with these movies, you should read some basic facts about him, and maybe peruse the cast lists of some of his films. I took a while to browse his filmography on Letterboxd, and it's helpful to notice how often he seems to play a fictional version of himself in his movies, or how often his actors play themselves, and how often he works with the same few people.
I think it's helpful to prepare yourself to recognize this because movie seven, in particular, seems absolutely full of his friends - it's deeply generous and sentimental not only about its characters, but also sentimental about Shiraishi's frequent collaborators, and it mixes those two sentimentalities in a couple interesting ways. There's a twist in that movie which I interpreted as basically an act of love for his creative partners. It's a gift to one actor, in particular, who finally gets a chance to cut loose and show off the extent of their skill in the silliest, loudest, most unexpected way possible. When you make something cool with your friends, isn't the greatest gift you can offer them the opportunity to shine?
I'm going to watch the rest of these, but the 7th film - Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi: Final Chapter - is the conclusion of an arc that feels like a Whole Idea. A complete statement! It's worth your time, even if horror isn't always your cup of tea. These movies have scares, but the scares aren't particularly bad, and the stuff they're doing and saying reminds me a lot more of Eizouken or Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie than most anything else.
I don't often come away from something feeling so strongly like I gotta evangelize it, but it's completely crazy that these movies aren't available with official translations in the US. They're kind of a monumental work. I feel really lucky to have seen them!