Waste of time

An absolute waste of money

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

A young actress named Nagisa (Yuka) gets a role in a horror film. It's based on a real incident where 11 people were killed. She starts having hallucinations and dreams about the killings and the place they took place at...but she's never been there. Things escalate leading to a tragic conclusion.I usually hate Asian horror films. They seem to be full of white faced ghost kids with big eyes jumping out at you. This was an exception. It DOES have dead kids (an uncomfortable image that they show far too much) but there's also a mystery involved with the killings. It's slowly unravelled and all comes together at the end. It's held together by good acting, great directing and a spooky soundtrack filled with unpleasant sounds and music. Unfortunately this is far from perfect. The plot has a few (minor) loopholes and it moves far too slow. There was this tendency to show the same scenes multiple times--it gets tedious fast. Still it does work on you and the ending did chill me. Recommended. I give it a 7.

"REINCARNATION", another Japanese horror flick by the director of "THE GRUDGE". I went into this one with high hopes. It turns out to be a really unremarkable and pretty bland attempt to make another ghost story J-Horror. This comes from a fairly average fan of the Grudge series, both the remakes and the originals.It's basically a pretty lame re-imagining of "The Shining". The main difference is that you have a film crew working in the hotel instead of a family staying there. The twist, which I won't reveal, was just way too predictable in my opinion, and did little to reward the 80 minutes I'd put into the movie. Last point I would say is that for even for a J horror flick, it's pretty slow-moving. There were a few creepy scenes, and the old film footage of the murders was done well, I admit, but overall it was not very scary and too slow to enjoy, IMO.

I consider myself retired from modern Asian ghost films after having been stung by the likes of The Grudge, The Ring, The Eye, A Tale of Two Sisters etc...but I decided to give this one a chance anyway because it was a part of the Eight Films to Die For series (which I've been slowly making my way through) and because the plot sounded rather interesting. While I would say that this film is above average for its type; and certainly better than most of the other modern Japanese horror films that I've seen, I wouldn't really say it was worth the time or effort. The plot focuses on a young actress that is given a role in a horror film after proclaiming to the producers that she would be perfect for the role as she was killed in a previous life. The film depicts the real life murders of a bunch of hotel guests by a crazed madman, and it's being filmed at the very place where the massacre took place. It's not long before the actress begins to be haunted by the malevolent ghosts killed at the hotel.The film is very slow and takes a while to get going. I've got no problem with this in theory, but unfortunately the build up to the plot and the central character are not very interesting, which makes things a bit tedious right from the start. Once it does finally get going (over halfway through the film), things do get a little more interesting and director Takashi Shimizu (who directed The Grudge, its sequels and remakes) even manages some really creepy sequences; one taking place in a library is the best, but the ending is rather well done too. The film does seem to expect the viewer to invest some thought in the plot; and for me this is the worst thing about it. It's just not interesting enough to captivate the viewer in order to make us want to invest any extra effort in the viewing. To the film's credit, the style is rather good and the director does have an eye for horror. Overall, the film didn't do enough for me to bother recommending it. The fact that it was a part of After Dark's series will (hopefully) mean there won't be a remake on the horizon any time soon.

"We'll stay together forever."College Professor, Kazuya Omori(Shun Oguri)claims the lives of eleven victims(including his wife, son & daughter)before committing suicide in a hotel in 1970, the 45th day of Showa. Movie director Ikuo Matsumura(Kippei Shiina)is motivated to create a portrait which focuses on the lives of the victims, shying away from the murderer. In a sense, his screenplay, "Memories" fashioned from memoirs and items involving those unfortunate victims whose fates were sealed on that day, is a testament or way of honoring them. Actress Nagisa Sugiura(Yûka)is selected to portray the little girl who was killed by her father, Omori and as soon as the script is delivered to her, strange occurrences plague her. She sees memories of that horrifying day, often reliving them as if drawn into that specific time. A college student, Yayoi Kinoshita(Karina)is having dreams of a specific hotel, and in her pursuit for that location, realizes it is the hotel where the eleven murders took place. Are these specific events related or mere coincidence? We watch as the film dedicated to the victims is recreated with poor Nagisa experiencing more and more horrifying occurrences. Both Nagisa and Yayoi will discover terrifying truths about why they experience these visions..they do correlate with that hotel and we watch in disturbing detail as those events from 1970 unfold.I think both "Ju-on:The Grudge" & "Marebito" were stepping stones to reach Takashi Shimizu's masterpiece,"Rinne/Reincarnation". He takes "cryptomnesia phenomenon"(..or the idea of a "past life", viewed as a symptom)and spins it as an unpleasant horror tale where those who are the proponents("the human body is just a vessel")of this are stuck with having to carry the burden of reliving the same grim fates of their predecessors. The significance of the little boy's red ball, the little girl's eerie doll, and even the Professor's 8 mm video-recorder all are distinct images that Shimizu uses to optimum effect. In an amazing feat, Shimizu runs three different events occurring at the same time simultaneously, depicting the calculated events of Omori and those he killed in one sequential span of screen time..Nagisa running through a crucial scene for Matsumura, Yayoi finding the hotel she's been searching for and discovering more than she could ever want to know, and Omori's video-recorded carnage viewed by Nagisa's agent(after an incident Nagisa 'relived in her dream, she found Omori's video-camera in her bed!). The final closing minutes as Nagisa discovers whose reincarnated spirit represents her and those who seek after her is quite unsettling and haunting. Actually the whole movie is quite wicked and disturbing. This was an amazing experience..more horror films should be this smart and gripping. This film doesn't hold back on child violence, either, as we see what Omori actually does to his son and daughter with a large knife.