Shiryôha

Well-acted with some good parts but ultimately a failure. Why?

It contains all the clichés of the Japanese ghost story without any of the merit. Weird footage shows up in a previously recorded video; voices on the cellphone; a guy gets slashed with a box cutter, the camera cuts away and we see nothing but red on the screen for two seconds - I don't mean blood, folks, I mean red... just red; dark spots growing on walls and on people's fingers (mold! creepy!) and last but not least, we get another lame attempt at tying in the influence of the media on the youth, oh, the youth!

The main character runs a television show where they find and film paranormal phenomena and guess what? Teenage suicides have increased almost a quarter since his show first came on. Didn't we already have enough of this with "Pulse" and "Suicide Club"? We didn't need another take on this worn theme.

Even if the movie did have any good parts (the contorted bodies crawling on the floor weren't bad) any effect they may have had is neutralized by the fact that this film was not shot on film. I do not know enough to say what it was exactly. It didn't look as bad as video, but it was certainly not film either. Perhaps it was high digital. Either way, it completely robbed the movie of any chance it had of being even remotely effective.

You could do worse than this film, but unless you are a curious fan of the Japanese ghost story genre, I would not recommend this to you.