It’s rare that even a casual horror fan doesn’t greet a new Japanese ghost story with the words, “I LIKE IT already!”
Even if the film is made by Tuscon-born one-time Mormon missionary (how he got into Asian culture and cinema) Dave Boyle.
The first time our heroine, ghost whisperer/ghost buster Airi sees her older sister in the rear view mirror of her ancient Volvo wagon hooked me on this one. The sister (Kurimi Inagaki) is only seen in mirrors or reflected in windows. She’s a ghost.
They can chat all they like — about “Mom,” the woman who passed this ghost-seeing business down, about Airi’s (Moeka Hoshi) new client, the owners of an old inn in the forest. But the only time they see each other there’s glass involved. Even when an insult’s called for.
“You suck (in Japanese with English subtitles)!”
New inn owner Teiko (Tae Kimura) insisted on hiring some supernatural help with a problem she thinks the place has. Her son Gunji?
“I don’t believe in this stuff.”
As soon as Airi banishes them from the property over their “But we paid good MONEY” to watch protests, she figures out what the mother was seeing and hearing.
A bloody-faced man, tall and thin, comes and goes. Staticky phone calls give her and us the chills. And as Airi starts poking around for clues as to who or what is causing this, her dead sister starts with the warnings, which grow more dire the deeper our investigator/ghost-banisher goes.
Every filmmaker has her or his own take of the “rules” and “realities” of their cinematic afterlife. Here, Boyle’s heroine speaks of a “veil” between the living and the dead. She uses a magic mirror with a zoetrope wheel that spins around its frame, and an enchanted candle to dip into the netherworld and dig up what this troubled ghost is after.
The devil is in the details in genre films of this sort, and Boyle comes up aces in his world-building and sense of cultural traditions dropped in on and sampled.
Our villain (Mutsuo Yoshioka) is creepy as all get out. But the other performances are more somber than riveting, empathetic or fear-inspiring.
I found the third act’s requisite sake-hits-the-fan mayhem more conventional and the “resolution” less interesting, frightening and moving than I was expecting.
But there’s entertainment value and no dishonor in this worthy homage to J-horror and the uneasy dead or about to die.
Rating: unrated, graphic violence
Cast: Moeka Hoshi, Kento Kaku, Kurumi Inagaki, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Bokuzō Masana and Tae Kimura.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Dave Boyle. A Magnolia release.
Running time: 1:45
