Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

This is a quiet psychological Japanese ghost story. Its a very dry film, in that there is no blood and gore. There is little if any action. It reminds me of Peter Straub novels and how ghosts from the past haunt people years later like in Ghost Story, Julia, and If You Could See Me Now. It a way its a Straub novel with a Japanese setting. Straub would have a lot more action.
It also has a lot to do with Shikoku and the 88 temples and how the area is known as a place for the dead. I like to think of this movie as a Buddhist's vision of hell. I took a class on Zen Buddhism at Kansai Gaidai in Osaka, Japan. The teacher passed around a book on Buddhist's hell. They were many ink drawings and illustrations about pain and suffering that are just as good as those done by Dore for Dante's Inferno. That is the weak part of the film for me. The director could have explored the whole concept of hell but I don't think it was his aim. He was trying to recreate and interpret, in his own way, the novel by Bando Masako. The whole movie could have been a lot scarier. There are other quiet psychological horror movies that work better like Hitchcock's The Rear Window. I originally bought this movie used on VHS at a Tsutaya videostore in Osaka around Umeda. I bought it recently on DVD so I could see the English subtitles and see if I liked it better. I understand the story better than when I just watched the Japanese VHS and tried to piece it together with my knowledge of Japanese. Still, its just not scary or as fun as other Japanese horror movies.
The best thing about the whole movie is Kuriyama Chiaki's performance. The whole movie is boring until you get to the scenes with Chiaki and she steals all the scenes she is in. If your interested in seeing Chiaki before Kill Bill and how she has grown as an actress then you might like it. There are better movies that she has starred in like Battle Royale and Ju-on. I wanted to like it better if only it had been scary.

I thought this was a good movie. I bough it because Chiaki was on the cover, and she is my favorite actress. I was disappointed when I watched it because she is hardly in the film at all. She is in the film about fifteen minutes, if that. She did do a good performance, though. But this isn't my favorite film. If I were to recommend a Chiaki film, it would have to be Battle Royale or Kagen no Tsuki.