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.
