Shiryôha

"Dead Waves" ("Shiryôha") turned out to be a rather mundane and boring attempt at a Japanese horror movie. Unlike many others in the genre, there was no Japanese girl in a white dress with long, black hair covering her face. And hurrah for that, at least. It was nice to see something new for a change. However, and this is a big however, the movie just failed to be impressive, scary or really go anywhere in the 77 minutes it ran for.

The story is about a young director of a ghost TV show, Hiroshi Usui (played by Toshihiro Wada), who is making fake documentaries about ghosts and hauntings, where he is projecting mentally ill people as being haunted. One a particular case, he discovers something called 'dead waves', a phenomena where ghosts have attuned themselves to TV waves. Warned not to show the footage of the young girl they just filmed, the director goes against the heed and warning, and as the show air, the vengeful spirits are unleashed.

Right, well essentially, the story isn't all that bad, the plot line did have some promise. However, the movie just never punched through and made a statement. It just droned on at a monotone pace, without ever becoming scary or getting above mediocrity.

I will say that the acting was alright, but the ghosts weren't really scary, and you never once felt scared throughout the entire movie.

For a Japanese ghost movie, then "Dead Waves" is a disappointing result, and you are better off with one of the countless other ghost movies available.

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.

I want to like this movie a lot but i just can't say it was great. It has its moments but for the most part it fails. When i first started watching it the first thought that went through my head was the movie Pulse. Even though i haven't seen Pulse (just released at the time of this writing) I know the premise. The acting was good, and the story line was decent but it tends to drag in places, i found myself playing with my phone or whatnot between the action sequences. Also the Japanese ghost thing with people crawling on floor all contorted is a bit over played in my opinion. I mean why does all Japanese ghost movies have the same thing like that? Don't they get tired of the same thing every time? I mean it was cool in The Ring and The Grudge but give it a break already.

OK, I am not Asian, I don't understand Asian culture. I don't know what makes them tick or what scares them. Perhaps if I did, I would of liked this movie. Or at least it would of made sense to me. A friend once told me that the Japanese people associate ghosts with water. If a Japanese horror movie does not have water, it will not scare them at all. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, its only one piece of the puzzle. How do you explain a needlessly over complicated plot? (Which is normal for Japanese horror movies, at least from my perspective.) Horrifying scenes that are never explained? The Japanese obsession with spooky looking faces and contorted bodies. Endings that make no sense at all. This movie seemed like a bunch of scary scenes thrown together, with little or no care whether it made sense or not. I could go on, but like I said before, if I was Asian maybe I would like this movie. But at the moment I just don't get it.

I've been told that many Japanese Horror Films are generally very good, at least better than the American Remakes. I can't say I've seen many, so my boyfriend was really excited to watch a Japanese Horror film with me and extol its virtues. He picked something he didn't know, but sounded interesting. Unfortunately, the box cover was the best part of the movie. The film itself was poorly written and probably heavily edited, leading to something incomprehensible and hard to follow. The first hour was slow and monotonous, the last 30 minute "climax" didn't make sense at all. It seemed rushed and had a lot cut out. Cinematography was obviously done by the director's 16 year old cousin, as it was cheaply made with poorly done cuts. Sets seemed to be temporarily borrowed from staff people's own homes and apartments. Sound quality was poor.

After watching it all, it has a pretty good idea behind it, if you can decipher what was probably the director's intent. Unfortunately what was presented was a complete waste of my time.

Don't bother watching if you can help it. You'll probably be disappointed.