A town is haunted by the myth of a woman whose face has been mutilated in a very awesome looking fashion. She wears a mask over her mouth and shows up to people asking "Am I pretty?" Their answer almost always leads to their death.
I loved this movie. The story was different. I haven't seen anything too similar to it before. The story was interesting, even a bit touching at points. It never got laughable to me. The whole thing stayed pretty dark and serious. (I'm sure the horrific involvement of children in the story helped that...) The camera work was really slick. I loved the lighting and the atmosphere towards the end. It had a great pace. It moved fast, even by American standards. (This is surprising for an Asian flick.) The ghost was unique by Asian standards. (She didn't have the hair over her face, nor did her hair seem to be alive.) The woman with the sliced mouth was a very cool visual.
This has been one of my favorite Japanese horror films yet. Another big difference from most Asian films I've seen is that IT ACTUALLY MADE SENSE. Many Asian flicks like to have ambiguous endings that don't seem to have a definite meaning, so the audience can discuss their take on it. That, or the films are just made very bizarre, outlandish, and hard to follow. But this one actually made sense to me all the way through.
Most of what I've read say it's "average"... I'm sorry, but all of the really famous Asian horror flicks I've seen seemed to be very similar to each other... I'd call those "average". In my eyes, this shied away from Asian routines, (which are sadly becoming American ones now...).
I highly recommend this to any supernatural horror fan. I thought it was a great little ghost flick with a good story and some awesome eye-candy.
