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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	2001
Country of origin:	Japan
Director:	Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Genre:	J-horror
Starring:	Haruhiko Katô, Kumiko Aso, Koyuki, Kurume Arisaka
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286751/
Tagline:	Do you want to meet a ghost?
Favourite line:	N / A - Subbed

Slow burning J-horror that baffles as much as it beguiles.

The plot:
A group of friends become concerned when one of their number appears to have vanished. Visiting his apartment, one of them discovers that he is present, and working on something strange on computer disk. Mid-conversation, from another room, the friend falls silent and, upon inspection, he is found to have hung himself.
Separately, a university student is unnerved when mysterious images start to appear on his computer screen. Unknown rooms with strangers sitting staring; phantom-like figures floating through places he has never been.
And, all the while, for both sets of protagonists, more and more people are vanishing until it seems that, surely, they must be the last people left alive in Japan.

Straight up oddball, this.
With a run-time approaching two hours, the pace is slow, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa opting for ambience over action. Indeed, for the duration of the film, not a single drop of blood is spilt and yet, throughout, an all-pervading sense of menace drips from the screen.
Borrowing liberally from such cult fare as Day of the Triffids, Buffy and even Star Trek, the plot contrivances are barely credible, but to chastise those involved for such trivialities would be missing the point entirely, for this is not about weaving something entirely new, this is about taking well-trodden J-horror and Western horror tropes, and adding a dreamlike twist. Logic is not high on the agenda here and, in truth, there were certain sections that made little to no sense to us down here at Smell the Cult HQ, but that mattered not one jot.
Philosophical musings – what if death is just one single moment played time and time again; does life, by definition, imply loneliness; are we ever truly happy until death claims us - are interspersed with awkward sections of dialogue between characters fraught with terror.
And there’s craft here, too, from a directorial point of view, one sequence in particular having us scratching our heads in puzzlement: a young woman, atop a large building, simply walks off and plummets to the ground. There’s no cut-away. No obvious edit point. As the viewer we watch the whole thing, from feet leaving the surface to the body crashing into the tarmac below and, for the life of us, we can’t figure out how they filmed it.
Round of applause, Mr. Kiyoshi.
We’re baffled.
Not a flick for everybody, that’s for sure, but those who enjoy their horror with a sense of introspection and thoughtfulness would be well advised to check it out.
Oh, and it’s creepy as all hell, too.
Recommended.