PRAY (2006)

Country: Japan

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 1H 17M

Director:

Yuichi Sato

Cast:

Tetsuji Tamayama, Sanae Miyata, Asami Mizukawa...

GHOUL'S RATING:

*(*) (2-)

 

Story: Two twenty-something kidnappers take their prey (a tiny and very unscary little girl) to an abandoned school. When they call the girl's parents, they're told that their only daughter died a year ago. In the meanwhile, the girl  disappears, and the desperate amateurs must chase her down the endless corridors. Later on three more of their friends appear so that there would be some more 'cannon fodder' for the ghostly kills... In the abandoned school no one can hear you pray...

Review: PRAY attempts to be different. PRAY wants to be a ghost flick with a difference. PRAY believes in the audience's eternal desire for twists. Alas! The stress is on 'attempts', 'wants' and 'believes'. The end result, however, is yet another lackluster attempt to cash in on the J-horror ghost craze.

Oh, yeah, it is different in the sense that the characters are not chased by ghosts in their apartments but in a deserted school. Is anything gained by this environment? Not really. This particular school is a far cry from the really creepy one in HAUNTED SCHOOL 4 (a very well made little horror that I strongly recommend over this one!). The building and its interiors are mind-numbingly mundane and utterly devoid of creepiness that more accomplished directors, like Shinya Tsukamoto or Shimako Sato, were able to invest in their spooky schools in HIRUKO THE GOBLIN and EKO EKO AZARAK, respectively. The cheap direct-to-video shots deliver a boring murky setting with no deep shadows or inventive stylization. There is neither atmosphere nor eye-candy, just plain boring building that the characters roam through endlessly.

 

And yes, they attempt to 'surprise' you with some twists here. There is even a blurb on the back cover of this DVD which says: 'A ghost story with a twist... followed by another. And another...' After watching the film itself, I was reminded of that old joke, when a reviewer says something like: 'This film is incredible in its stupidity! It's amazing that anyone could watch more than 15 minutes of this nonsense!' and then they make a blurb which says: 'This film is incredible ...! It's amazing!' Well, something like that happens here. Yes, there is a twist after a twist here, but the fact that they are piled one after another is not necessarily a good thing. As all great films with a twist or two in them have demonstrated, twists are effective only in stories with characters to care about. And there's nothing remotely like that in this flick.  In PRAY, the twists are merely a lazy device, mechanical and ultimately self-demeaning. After an hour-long boredom of watching some dispensable ciphers run around the corridors you just won't care.

 

To sum up: no characters; no story; no suspense; no atmosphere; no real frights; no gore to talk about; no inventive kills; no eye candy; no memorable set-pieces... Why should anyone bother? To 'enjoy' the drab environment of an abandoned school in which all the inventory is somehow still there? To discover that a person can be 'killed' by merely cutting his hand off? How's that for an inventive (or physiologically, medically correct) kill? To be surprised by the 'couldn't care less' twists? Why, really? I cannot recommend this quickie to anyone but the most die-hard completists of Japanese horror. Everyone else should pray for the release of something worthier.

HISTORICAL POETICS OF HORROR GENRE

             I got my doctoral degree in Literature at Belgrade's Faculty of Philology (English Department) on February 22. My PhD mentor was Prof. Dr. Zoran Paunović, and the title of my dissertation is HISTORICAL POETICS OF HORROR GENRE IN ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE. Basically, its 470 pages cover the rise and development of horror literature in English from Gothic until 21st century with close analysis of selected representative key works and their poetics. This is the first academic degree in Serbia received for a disertation on horror genre.

            Below you can see this dissertation's summary and contents, illustrated with photos from the PhD ceremony.

           

HISTORICAL POETICS OF HORROR GENRE IN ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

SUMMARY

            This thesis is based on the following premises: a) there is a kind of prose devoted to eliciting fear in its readers; b) the works belonging to it constitute a distinctive literary genre; c) this kind of prose was first shaped into a distinctive genre in the form of English Gothic novel, in the second half of the 18th century; d) there is a clear and recognizable formal and poetical continuity from Gothic novel to today's horror literature; e) therefore, Gothic novel is considered an early historical stage in the development of horror genre.

            The thesis assumes that horror is a complex aesthetic construct whose poetics and development were influenced by a variety of historical and aesthetic factors, so that it can only be fully understood by taking into account its predecessors and influences and by viewing its aesthetic distinction (elicting fear in the reader by specific themes and narrative devices) in the cultural and historical contexts that shaped it from late 18th until early 21st century within Anglo-American literature.

            Horror is defined as a type of fictional narrative prose defined by three key factors: particular themes (the clash between the homely known and the threatening unknown Other), adequate motifs (related to various emanations of Otherness, which may or may not belong to the fantastic mode) and aesthetic intent (causing fear, terror, suspense). The latter is realized in two ways: 1) through selection of appropriate themes and adequate motifs, and b) through a genre-specific rhetoric directed towards causing the reader to feel insecurity, fear, terror. The common motifs, themes and rhetorical tropes constitute a horror-specific horizon of expectations whose synchronic and diachronic variations move the generic boundaries while constantly reinvigorating the genre and creating genre-specific effect and meaning expectant within a specific cultural context which is defined by the triad: author, publisher and reader. 

            The poetics of genre is viewed as the result of merging the individual authors' poetics with specific extra-literary and extra-aesthetic influences which shape the fears dominant in certain periods as well as the modes of their artistic representation. Therefore, genre is not seen as merely aesthetic category, but is shown to be influenced by extra-literary influences such as: the cultural climate and dominant views and values, historical events, great discoveries and scientific theories, emergence of similar literary schools, movements and genres. This idea of genre is reflected in the methodology of this work: it is based on close reading and notions of aesthetics of reception by H. R. Jauss but also on literary history and history of art and culture in general, so as to define the contexts which shaped the literature of terror and enabled its greatest development precisely within Anglo-American literature. This approach answers the two basic questions related to any historical poetics: 1) What are the principles according to which works of art are constructed and by means of which they achieve particular effects? and 2) How and why have these principles arisen and changed in particular empirical circumstances?

            The structure of this work is shaped by the desire to present the poetics of horror in a clear and well-supported manner. Its first task is to define the key concepts like genre, aesthetic intent, horizon of expectations, romance, Gothic, gothic novel, horror and historical poetics. A general overview of the basic tendencies towards defining horror genre in theory in English is followed by a chapter devoted to rare attempts of doing the same in Serbian literary (and film) theory.

            After providing the theoretical basis for horror as a literary genre the thesis analyzes the origin of the poetics of horror in the form of Gothic novel, in its two phases: early Gothic, constituted by Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) and late Gothic, represented by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). The period of Gothic horror culminates with the works of American writer Edgar Allan Poe which have fundamentally reconstituted the Gothic tradition providing a modern, complex content and most appropriate form (short story).

This is followed by defining the classical period of horror and the dominant three varieties of horror poetics in it: the ghost story, exemplified by "The Turn of the Screw" (1898) by Henry James, Victorian neo-Gothic of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) as the most typical and influential representative, and the "weird tale" of cosmic horror with its apex in the stories by H. P. Lovecraft (whose "The Colour from outer Space", 1927, is analyzed as its best example). All these works serve to re-examine and further develop the Gothic legacy, accommodated for the new societal, cultural and aesthetic circumstances of the late 19th and early 20th century.

The final part od the thesis deals with the modern horror literature, defines the horror bestseller phenomenon and analyzes the poetics of Stephen King (exemplified by his novel The Shining, 1977) which made him one of the bestselling authors of the 20th century and which, also, indirectly enabled an unprecedented expansion of horror fiction. It facilitated the rise and development of new original voices in modern horror fiction whose representative works are analyzed in the final chapters.

Analysis of each of the key variables of poetics of horror stresses the governing formal principles through which the aesthetic intention of horror genre is manifested, such as: identification, retardation, ellipsis, parallel plots and subplots, epistolar and/or diary form, unreliable narrator, indetermination, ambivalence and ambiguity, plot structure based on the race with time, gradation of horrific events, accumulation of apparently insignificant hints, clues and allusions, cognitive horror, strong allusiveness, unexpected plot twist. These formal elements can be found in works of other genres, too, but never in such number nor governed by the same aesthetic intent leading to the effect of causing fear.

This historical poetics of horror genre demonstrates the significance of horror fiction for Anglo-american literature. This genre is revalued as a legitimate, respectable kind of writing which has attracted numerous literary giants and whose themes, ideas and aesthetic qualities make it an equal and inseparable part of literature in general. Progressive ideas in the best horror fiction are reflected, among other things, in its attitude to the "monstrous" Other, i.e. in showing the complex interrelations the Otherness has with the representatives of authority of the community. One of the common effects of horror is contained in showing the fluidity of borders and limits: it is a genre defined by its questioning of boundaries, breaking down the taboos, unveiling the hidden, undesirable, nightmarish, irrational. The rich variety of horror themes can be reduced to one idea: what we consider known is actually interwoven with the unknown. The world is not what it seems; behind the veil of appearances there are other, threatening forces. We are not what we seem; behind the reflection in the mirror there is something else, which questions the powers of reason and morals. The clash between the known and the unknown initially causes fear, but this fear is not the ultimate goal of horror fiction: the result produced by the juxtaposition between the homely and the Other brings about the (cognitive) understanding and (emotional) catharsis to the reader.

           

CONTENTS:

1.  INTRODUCTION

2. DEFINITION OF BASIC CONCEPTS AND PROBLEMS

2.1. Defining basic concepts
2.11. Genre, aesthetic intention and "horizon of expectations"
2.12. Romance
2.13. Gothic / Gothic novel
2.14. Horror
2.15. Historical poetics

2.2. Defining the problem
2.21. Horror theory in English language
2.22. Horror theory in Serbian language

3. FROM GOTHIC TO HORROR: ORIGIN OF GENRE

3.1. Early Gothic
3.11. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto - cultural climate, intention and reception
3.12. The Castle of Otranto and the rhetoric of horror
3.13. The legacy of Early Gothic

3.2 Late Gothic
3.21 Mary Shelley: Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus - the cultural climate, intention and reception
3.22 Frankenstein: the aesthetic and conceptual achievements
3.23 Frankenstein and the poetics of horror
3.24 Legacy of Late Gothic

3.3. Horror Story
3.31. Themes and motifs of American Gothic
3.32. Edgar Allan Poe and the poetics of short (horror) story
3.33. Thematic cycles of Poe's horror fiction
   3.331. Dead beloved woman
   3.332. "The Imp of the Perverse"
   3.333. Cosmic horror
3.34 Legacy of Poe's poetics of horror

4. HORROR: CLASSICAL PERIOD

4.1. Ghost story
4.11. The role of the supernatural in the works of Henry James
4.12. "The Turn of the Screw": intention and reception
4.13. Conceptual and aesthetic achievements of  "The Turn of the Screw"
4.14. Legacy of ghost story

4.2. Victorian neo-Gothic novel
4.21. Vampires in literature before Dracula
4.22. Bram Stoker's Dracula: intention and reception
4.23. Dracula: conceptual and aesthetic achievements
4.24. Legacy of Dracula and the neo-Gothic

4.3. "Weird Tales" of cosmic horror
4.31 H. P. Lovecraft's poetics of fantasy and horror
   4.311. Lovecraft's attitude towards science and fantasy
   4.312. Lovecraft and the horror tradition: influences and differences
   4.313. Lovecraft's style
   4.314. Reception of Lovecraft's poetics
4.32. The conceptual and aesthetic achievements of "The Color out of Space"
4.33. Legacy of Lovecraft's fiction

5. MODERN HORROR LITERATURE

5.1. Horror as best-seller
5.11. Stephen King and poetics of horror
   5.111. Stephen King and horror tradition
   5.112. Stephen King's poetics of horror
5.12. The Shining as a modern bestselling horror novel
5.13. Legacy of Stephen King's poetics of horror

5.2. Trends in modern horror fiction
5.21. Modern Gothic: Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Joyce Carol Oates
5.22. Psychological horror: Robert Bloch, Thomas Harris
5.23. Modern ghost story: Robert Aickman
5.24. Body horror: Clive Barker
5.25. The cosmic horror: Tomas Ligotti

6. CONCLUSION

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

ONE MISSED CALL 2 (2005)

Country: Japan

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 105'

Director:

Renpei Tsukamoto

Cast:

Mimula, Yu Yoshizawa, Asaka Seto, Renji Ishibashi 

GHOUL RATING: **(*)  3-

Story: The familiar cell-phone ring announces a different ghost in this sequel. Kyoko (Mimula) has three days to unravel the secret behind the curse, or to die trying. She is helped by her boyfriend, and a female journalist whose sister was killed by the same (or is it?) cell-phone haunting, death-foretelling ghost. Ultimately, they are led to Taiwan, to a deserted mining village where a young girl was tortured and killed in the mine, only to leave a terrible grudge behind her…

Review: The movie opens with a fine scene: it's raining, and a spooky black-haired woman, dressed in white, her face obscured by the umbrella, comes to pick up a little girl from the kindergarten. The little girl greets her teacher, and someone else next to her. But no one is standing there. She goes with the woman, leaving the teacher puzzled… Pity that none of this prologue has anything to do with ONE MISSED CALL 2. The story proper starts with a similar scene like in the original: a group of young people are sitting in a restaurant, when that well-known cell-phone melody starts again. This time, however, the film breaks one of the basic rules established in part one. The phone is left in the kitchen, and is picked up by the owner's father. He hears his daughter making a remark about leaving the oil on the stove, and then screaming. Only minutes later he will be found with half of his face literally poached in oil. All this is fine, but whatever happened with the basic rule of the phone-owner being the next victim, and warning him/herself from the future? What about the three days' period between the omen and its fulfillment?

ONE MISSED CALL 2 takes such rules pretty haphazardly: sometimes they apply, sometimes they don't. Who cares, as long as anything spooky happens, right? Well, not really. One of the many qualities of RINGU, the unattainable blue-print for most of later Asian ghost-horrors, is that it establishes its rules early in the film, and plays upon them consistently until the end, with no cheats, no forced twists and eleventh-hour's changes of plan for the sake of adding yet another superficial 'boo!' But, ONE MISSED CALL 2 is pretty far from RINGU. Hell, it's far even from Miike's ONE MISSED CALL! While many accused the Master for making a 'derivative' film, unworthy of his status of a groundbreaking, unpredictable purveyor of hilarity, frights and gruesome images, at least his ONE MISSED CALL was scary, dynamic and full of memorable images and set-pieces. The sequel by the TV helmer, Renpei Tsukamoto (not related to Shinya!), is a typical by-the-numbers retread of been-there done-that. 

 

The worst attempt at 'originality' is at the same time the most misguided step-away from the original: namely, the ghostly perpetrator of cell-phone haunting is no longer Mimiko, but some entirely new girl creature. As the story goes on, the link to the previous film, and the whole cell-phone thing, becomes increasingly tenuous so that, after the half-hour mark, it's almost entirely forgotten. The whole affair seems like one of those instances where an unrelated screenplay is forcefully made to fit a franchise by inserting random elements from it which never properly gel into a coherent whole (see the later parts of HELLRAISER series as text-book examples of this strategy).

To sum up: no Mimiko, no warnings to self from the future, no colorful death scenes (OK, there is ONE, in the bathroom, and that's it for the whole movie!), no jawbreaker candies (until the forced twist ending)… So what do we have here? A tired, worn out story of yet another investigation which leads to yet another mistreated girl who avenges from beyond the grave. Because of her scary premonitions, the villagers of her Taiwan community sewed her lips shut, and left her tied to a chair in an abandoned mine. There are at least TWO plot points here which resemble RINGU, and yes – there IS a scene in which the girl slowly, one hand at a time, creeps out from a well. Only minutes later another broken apparition crawls down the stairs for all those of you who somehow missed the JU-ON / GRUDGE series. Bo-ring! The final half-hour gives its best to achieve an over-the-top horror-action finale like in Miike's original, but fails miserably. It's just too incoherent, too 'anything goes' to make us care for any actor from the stupidly separated trio which roam the abandoned mine. Even the 'tragic-romantic' ending is half-hearted (or is it half-assed?) since the characters were never real in the first place.

Make no mistake: ONE MISSED CALL 2 is a tolerable, watchable time-waster which can be recommended for die-hard fans of J-horror. There are some moderate scares, or at least solid attempts to create them (although very few in the overlong mid-section which begs for fast-forwarding!), so indiscriminate viewers can be satisfied for the time being. But there's nothing in this particular film to stay with you and haunt you, say, a week or two later. As the time passes, all that'll remain is a ghostly blur which merges with all those other would-be-spooky Asian horrors trying to cash in on the ghost-craze. If you care for originality, good frights, and movies which respect your intelligence, this is a call you can afford to miss.

SHUTTER (2004)

Country: Thailand

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 93'

Directors: Banjong Pisanthanakun, Parkpoom Wongpoom

Cast:

Ananda Everingham,

Natthaweeranuch Thongmee,

Achita Sikamana,

Unnop Chanpaibool

GHOUL RATING: *** (3)

Story: A young couple –Tun, a photographer, and his girlfriend Jane- are driving home from a party late at night. They have a hit-and-run accident: after they mow down a young woman, Tun urges Jane to drive away from the scene. Soon, however, strange light patterns and faces start appearing on his photos, scary dreams haunt him, ghostly presences are felt around him and Jane, and they start investigating the ‘ghost photos’ phenomena and history of the girl who seems to be behind the haunting. Of course they are not chosen randomly: it turns out that the ghost is attached in a very peculiar way to one of them…

Review: Just as you might suspect from the above synopsis, SHUTTER is yet another addition to the still-growing body of RINGU-induced works dealing with (or should I say: exploiting?) the motif of a long-black-haired female ghost prone on one kind of vengeance or another – usually by popping out of various technological devices such as TVs, video tapes, cell phones or, as in this case – cameras and photographs. OK, it was scary the first time around. But after a dozen films with black hairs emerging from the water surface or female ghosts crawling closer and closer towards a petrified protagonist, do you still shiver - or do you yawn?

SHUTTER is not exactly yawn-inducing thanks to a solid pace and occasionally energetic direction. There are inspired shots, like a single take of a man’s suicide over a high-rise’s balcony (simply but effectively staged, and explained in the additional features on the disc), or a stroboscopic scene in which Tun uses the camera’s flash to find his way in a suddenly darkened room. The hit-and-run is also well edited, and has a nice… uh, impact. The film’s culmination involves a solid suspense on the fire escape ladders chase, and the very end has a nice touch of macabre romance which reminded me, in a way, of the end of HAUTE TENSION (a far superior film to SHUTTER by any standard, and strongly recommended!).

The film’s main gimmick is the ‘ghost photos’, a phenomenon that you can read about in any publication devoted to the supernatural. The directors use the allegedly real photos (credited at the end of the film) which show the blurry faces gawking behind their living relatives. The concept is at the same time silly and potentially spooky: the problem is, spooky photos have already been done to death in the past 30 years, ever since THE OMEN; and the original RINGU has reminded us of that as well. Imperfections of the eye and the secrets hidden in the grainy images were suitable bases for films ranging from Antonioni’s artsy BLOW OUT to some great movies by Dario (DEEP RED) Argento and Brian (DRESSED TO KILL) de Palma. The two directors of SHUTTER are not visionaries like those authors, but merely competent purveyors of the tried-and-true tricks: their use of photography is far from revolutionary in either formal (visual) or thematic sense, but it serves the purpose of a decent, unambitious, moderately effective piece of entertainment.

The amount of scare achieved by the film depends strictly on the viewer’s cinematic experience and exposure to similar Asian (and other) flicks from recent years. The ghost photos would seem much scarier if you haven’t seen them in RINGU; the same film has also staged the ultimate ghost-crawl-toward-you, but the one in SHUTTER is passable as well (though not as good as the one in A TALE OF TWO SISTERS); the black haired head emerging from the water would be more effective if you haven’t seen RINGU or DARK WATER; the upside-down ceiling-walking ghost will be even scarier without THE GRUDGE and ONE MISSED CALL, while the ghost hovering next to a running car may be familiar to those who saw JU-ON 2; and of course, the whole ‘they are around us’ gimmick (from the film’s tagline) has already been exploited by THE EYE…

Other than the whole photo angle, SHUTTER is curious for having a protagonist who turns out to be one of the most despicable main characters in any recent film I can remember other than BAD SANTA (although even the latter attains a redemption at the end!). The amount of his sleazy, whiny cowardice and irresponsibility has to be seen to be believed! But don’t worry: he gets his just desserts! Some reviewers have stressed a big twist at the end; I won’t spoil it for you, but I’ll reassure that it’s not of the tired ‘they’ve-been-dead-all-along’ variety. Besides, it’s not such a big twist after all. The overhyped reviews elsewhere on the net may make you expect something more than a tolerable, watchable nothing-special Asian ghost flick with slick visuals that SHUTTER is, so – be warned. Don’t believe the hype until it’s the KFCC hype!

DVD [ NTSC, Region 3 ] : The usual plastic DVD case is enveloped by a carton one (slightly better designed). The sharp images come in anamorphic widescreen enhanced for 16 x 9 TVs, while the audio options include Dolby Digital 2.0, Dolby Digital EX 5.1 and dts ES. Audio is in original Thai, with subtitles in English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Other than the film itself, on this dual-layered disc you can also find very short and conventional promotional featurettes: a minute or two of director’s and actors’ talk, a couple of minutes of behind the scenes, a ‘ghost photo’ made during the film’s shoot (!), and the trailers.

ARANG (2006)

Country: South-Korea

Genre: Horror

Running Time: 98'

Director: Ahn Sang Hoon

Cast: Dong-Wook Lee, Jong-su Lee,Yun-ah Song

GHOUL RATING: ** (2)

Story: So-Young and her rookie assistant are investigating a series of bizarre (bloodless!) murders. All the victims seem to have died due to an acid released in their bodies. But wait a minute: what about the ghost-girl we see during each uninspired death scene? As they discover more about the case, they come to realize that the victims are somehow related to a young girl's death ten years ago. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to decide that it must be her ghost avenging upon the miscreants. Or, perhaps this whole ghost-thing is just a sham, and a human agent is behind it all? Will 90 minutes be enough to unravel this complicated mystery???

Review: Here we go again: yet another 'long-haired-ghost's revenge flick'! All the tropes that we've come to know and hate are back here, with no shame, no regret, and – worst of all – no attempt to upgrade them, to do something original with the trite motifs and devices.

-Urban legend that schoolgirls tell to one another? Check!

-Close-ups of bloodied ghost-eyes? Check!

-Sudden movements in front of the camera (accompanied by a loud noise)? Check!

-Black hair appearing in the most inconvenient places, growing insanely? Check!

-Black water oozing and announcing the ghost? Check!

-Pale fingers (with bloodied nails) slowly crawling towards the camera (and victim)? Check!

-Blue-faced kiddy-ghost? Check!

-Evil deeds from the past which haunt the perpetrators now? Check!

-Said evil deeds revealed by a convenient (fuzzy) tape? Check!

-Photo and film camera reveal the ghost, otherwise unseen? Check!

-Haunted web-site? Check!

-Ghost in the elevator (hovering, but not doing anything!)? Check!

-Autopsy revealing strange things about the victims? Check!

-Going to a small village community at the sea-side to discover the ghost's past? Check!

-Discovery of the dead woman's corpse in the culmination? Check!

-Surprising twist at the end? Check! Check! Check!

Rather than a real movie, ARANG is an anthology of clichés. Its sole claim at 'originality' is the fact that it's structured like a police procedural, with a policewoman investigator as the protagonist, rather than some journalist, accidental witness or the like. Even the crime-thriller aspect of the plot is not played honestly, as the key clue comes literally out of nowhere. During a ride in the car, So-Young's assistant mumbles: 'There must be a secret hidden in it.' That jumpstarts her light-bulb: 'A secret? Hidden? Of course, let's go and dig the dead dog buried in the first victim's backyard!' They go there, dig the corpse, she slices its stomach and – would you believe it? – out comes a roll of tape! The director never bothers to explain whether the dog swallowed it or if it was inserted into its carcass (which looked pretty undamaged to me). We're also supposed to take for granted that a loop of tape which spent some time in the decomposing fluids of a dead dog will be preserved enough to be watchable! Mind you, this is not some minor clue, but the key discovery in the investigation, as the tape reveals what, exactly, happened to the poor girl (now, apparently, a ghost) and who, exactly, did it to her.

The final twist is very underwhelming as it undermines THE HORROR aspect and stresses THE THRILLER-DRAMA. It's especially silly in a movie marketed as a horror, with ghosts, spirits etc. In the end it boils down to a crime-thriller laced with (as it turns out) rather haphazard and pointless apparitions. It might be excusable if at least the crime elements were treated honestly and originally, which they weren't. The investigation goes strictly by the numbers (with the aforementioned cheat of a discovery in the dead dog's stomach!), and its dominantly prosaic atmosphere ruins the spooky feel ARANG could otherwise have.

Neither fish nor fowl, it remains a strictly middle of the road affair. The tech credits are solid, but uninspired. Well-made movies are coming from Korea on the assembly line but this one has no substance beneath its professional gloss. As a mystery it's predictable and obvious; as a horror it's stale, déjà vu, and therefore ineffective. We want something fresh, not same-old same-old!

SHIKOKU (1999)

Director:

Shunichi NAGASAKI

Cast:

Yui NATSUKAWA
Michitaka TSUTSUI
Chiaki KURIYAMA
Toshie NEGISHI
Taro SUWA

Country: Japan

Year: 1999

GHOUL RATING: *** (3)

'Shikoku' could easily be discarded as 'yet another long-black-haired-ghost story from Japan' but please bear with me. It is much more than a mere derivative attempt to cash-in on J-horror craze. While it was one of the first ghost stories to follow 'Ring' (1998) and was actually playing a double-bill with 'Ring 2' (1999), it is actually based on a novel by Masako Bando, and its literary origins are visible in its greater complexity and subtlety.

Unlike 'Ring' and most of its successors ('The Grudge', 'Dark Water', etc.), which were mostly urban tales, 'Shikoku' is firmly rooted in the depths of Japanese countryside and its ancient folklore. Shikoku is the name of the smallest of the four islands that make up Japan: its meaning is 'four kingdoms', but a very slight variation in spelling, depending on the type of kanji used, can turn it into 'land of the dead'. Still, before you think 'George A. Romero' be reminded that Japanese dead folks are more polite and subtle, and much less bloodthirsty than their Pittsburgh counterparts.

The film is based on an actual traditional belief that Shikoku is where the gateway to the Land of the dead lies, and in order to contain the spirits therein, the believers would go on a pilgrimage along the entire island, visiting one by one all 88 Buddhist temples there. But here is the catch: if one goes in reverse direction, visiting the last temple first etc. then… who knows?... perhaps the dead will walk the earth again? And that's exactly the kind of pilgrimage a certain woman goes on in order to resurrect her prematurely deceased daughter, Sayori (Chiaki Kuriyama).

The plot starts when a young woman, Hinako, comes from Tokyo back to her home, a secluded village in the mountains, to take care of her old house. She learns that her childhood friend, Sayori, had drowned. She is accompanied by Fumiya, the boy who used to play with these two girls, now a young man whose help will be vital when the mysterious events start taking place in the vicinity. Childhood romance is rekindled between these two, but also a certain bitterness and envy from the past on the part of Sayori, whose spirit is hovering over her ex-friend and ex-boyfriend, understandably displeased with their coming together.

'Variety' described this film as 'supernatural drama', and while I hate when horror films are labelled 'supernatural-this' or 'thriller-that', in this case that might be a more suitable label. At least it won't make you expect a full-blown horror and be disappointed by the rather restrained approach. The pace IS deliberate and the scares are subtle and quiet ones, mostly lacking the exploitative shock-value. In other words, SOME viewers might find this film boring or devoid of frights. However, for this reviewer at least, the first two thirds of 'Shikoku' were almost perfect. The opening provides a fine prologue of a childhood friendship and the anguish when one of the kids departs for the big city. It is followed by Hinako's elegiac return to her hometown and her past some fifteen years later, and the contrast between Tokyo and quietly creepy countryside in the misty mountains is pitch-perfect. The same goes for the unspoken, but very much present sentiment of meeting one's childhood friends still stuck in their backwater small-town existence, and their resentment towards the one who 'made it in the big city'. This point is most obvious in the vaguely-insulting words that a grocery girl reports to Hinako: apparently, she merely repeats what she'd heard from Sayori, but the relish with which she reiterates the insults speaks volumes. Hinako is not welcome: she obviously belongs to another world now.

The frights come unforced, naturally arising from the beautiful setting and its atmosphere: statues with their heads cut off in the woods, a shady shape behind the window of an abandoned house, a boy who glimpses his dead grandfather in the middle of the day (shot in a very simple but effective way), a visit to Sayori's house where hundreds of papers proving her mother's visits to all of the 88 temples are dancing in the night breeze… A scene in which Sayori stands unnoticed over Fumiya's shoulder is comparable to a similarly spooky scene from the original 'Ring' when Sadako visits Reiko in the park, in the middle of the day. 'Shikoku' makes an excellent use of such quiet moments to instill the chill down your spine. Sadly, in the last third of the movie, when one expects a worthy climax, it goes slightly downhill. Not so much to ruin the whole movie, but enough to make it a 'flawed classic'. I'll try not to spoil it, as this film deserves to be seen: suffice to say that the ending consists mostly of a lengthy discussion with Sakuya's ghost and clumsy attempts (by a grotesque-looking priest) to return her where she came from while our heroine Hinako stands passively out of the way.

'Shikoku', at least, will not insult your intelligence with some silly plot-twist in the last minute and, if you give it a chance and invest some patience, will provide some solid and lasting chills long after the anti-climactic ending. If you like your horrors (sorry: 'supernatural dramas'!) slow and creepy like an autumn mist, go for 'Shikoku'. It provides the kind of scares that are rarely attempted –or achieved – nowadays. The countryside setting is the real star of this film, and it is competently lensed. As for the human stars, their roles are rather thankless, as they have to convey a lot of the unspoken with their expressions and body language, but their acting is fine. A special reason to see 'Shikoku' is certainly to enjoy one of the first roles of the exquisite Chiaki Kuriyama ('Kill Bill', 'Battle Royale', 'Azumi 2', 'MPD Psycho', 'The Great Yokai War'…), here playing the most beautiful ghost of Japanese cinema.

The film is available in a recently released DVD box set 'The Kadokawa Horror Collection' (together with 'Inugami', 'Isola: Multiple Personality Girl' and 'Shadow of the Wraith'). The colors are slightly muted, but in this case it only adds to the misty feeling of the visuals. In the extra department the disc boasts (unimpressive) trailers for all four Kadokawa horrors, a 3-minute 'behind the scenes' feature (shooting a scene toward the end of 'Shikoku') and approx. 10 minutes worth of not-too-revealing interviews with the director and two leading ladies.

THE GHOST (2004)

Country: South Korea

Year: 2004

Genre: Horror

Director: Kim Tae-Kyung

Cast: Kim Ha-Neul, Nam Sang-Mi, Ryu Jin

GHOUL RATING: 2+ **(*)

Story: Ji-Won is a bright student (or so we're told: we never see her say or do anything really bright). Only trouble: she suffers from amnesia. Something terrible happened in her past, but there's no one in the world to tell her what that was. Her demented mother doesn't tell her, her school friends don't tell her. Then some of the friends start dying. They're technically drowned (lungs filled with water), although found in their living or photo rooms. The police don't find this particularly strange, even after a mental patient who was tied up to her bed is found drowned in this very bed. Happens all the time. Anyway, the usual 'unraveling of the mystery from the past' follows, with the usual 'mean trick backfired' revealed, the usual 'revenge', the usual confrontation, and the slightly unusual (because so preposterous) twist ending.

Review: The hardest movies to review are the average ones: those that follow the rules established by their predecessors without ever really showing the slightest hint of ambition to transcend those. Comfortably snuggled in the confines of cliché they trod their ways through another 'been there, done that, got the T-shirt' tired plot. The film's title is the epitome of unoriginality: THE GHOST. Oh, yeah, no surprises there. Let's make it as obvious as can be (even if the alternative title is DEAD FRIEND).

The opening scene establishes the tried and tested formula of Girls+Ghosts: they either recount some spooky urban legend (as in RINGU, and dozens of its clones, including the recently reviewed ARANG) or meddle with ghosts in some infantile way, like here, where they're playing with an Ouija board. Have you noticed how these ghost flicks never have guys as main characters? It's because this particular subgenre is predominantly oriented towards the girl market: they seem to be eating up any ghost story they're served. That's why these flicks are always about a girl, or a bunch of girls, getting into trouble with ghosts summoned or unsummoned.

The plot is as worn out as can be: a group of girls did something bad in their recent past; someone was killed due to a silly prank; a vengeful ghost appears and kills the girls involved; the final girl tries to unravel the 'mystery'; it leads to the inevitable 'go to the death scene and find the body' conclusion; and of course, would you believe it, when everything seems to be fine and dandy at the end – there's (surprise! surprise!) a TWIST! And a twist on the twist. And the final turn of the screw that just explodes the whole construction. Yawn!

Images are all déjà vu: long strands of hair coming out of the sink; creepy water effects (in one would-be scary scene we're treated to what appears to be a footage in reverse of a girl peeing down her legs); photo developing lab as the setting (with the inevitable 'ghost appears on the photograph, unseen by the cheerful morons standing in the front' trick); dripping wet ghosts; spooky dolls; scary ghost-eyes staring behind the wiry hair; ghost hands crawling on the floor, slowly advancing towards the hapless victim… You name it, they have it, unashamedly. The direction is also along those lines of 'inventiveness': false scares, sudden movements in front of the camera accompanied by a loud noise, double-wakes (you know the drill: a girl wakes up: seems there's a ghost: she jumps: no, it was just her dress: everything's ok, go back to sleep: bang- there's a ghost in her bed! wake up again, this time for real)… No old trick is beneath these purveyors of cheap scares, not even that despicable evergreen: the hand on the shoulder jolt!

Since the basic plot is so… basic, they felt the need to spice it up with some unrelated and/or silly stuff. For example, it never really explains a couple of plot points, like: how does the opening witchboard invocation connect with the rest of the movie, and who is the first girl killed? If the whole thing hangs on the revenge to some very specific wrong-doers, why is this unrelated character killed? Also, there's a little girl ghost which appears in several scenes, though it's never connected with the big-girl-revenge plot. I guess she's there because ghost kids are scary, as seen in DARK WATER, THE GRUDGE and elsewhere. Well, maybe they were scary, the first five or six times, but now… they're an old trick used in the same old, same old way. You can crawl around with your wet doll all you want, girlie, but we've seen your ghostly brothers and sisters so many times now, you'd better give up and go back to your mommy.

The main 'spice' that's added to a boring, linear story is the twist ending. It is so convoluted and stupid that it inspired discussions on numerous forums about who possessed whom, whose ghost was in whose body at which point in the movie, who did what to whom, etc. The overall effect is that of a thoroughly bland, tasteless dish that someone felt the need to spice up with so much salt and pepper that now it's even more inedible than before, when it was just bland. It will leave you scratching your head or cursing or maybe throwing stuff at your TV… or perhaps you'll rush to the internet to see the explanation for what the filmmakers were supposed to tell you, but couldn't. My advice: save yourself some time – it's stupid, too complicated and makes no sense at all. Leave it be.

On the positive side: the acting is solid for this type of flick (with the exception of the asylum girl, who overacts so much you'd expect Leslie Nielsen behind the corner), the effects are good, the pace is passably quick, and the photography (by Moon Yong-Sik) is exceptionally good: if nothing else, this must be one of the best looking recent Korean horrors, and its visuals (if not the substance) are way above average. Sadly, the content is so immaterial it could scare and entertain only the most undemanding and the most uninitiated. If you've seen more than three Asian horrors about ghosts, you can freely skip THE GHOST, as it offers nothing new whatsoever.