None of the seven young actresses who portray the group of friends who visit the house was a trained film actress. The young ladies were models who had worked with director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi in advertisements or commercials.
According to director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, this is the first Japanese film to use video effects, which he applied in a scene to make one of the girls "dissolve" underwater through low fidelity video and a simple chroma key effect.
The script was partly inspired by Obayashi's then 12-year-old daughter Chigumi. She told him of a fear she had, that the mirror she used would eat her.
Despite achieving unexpected commercial and critical success upon release in Japan, the film was rarely seen in the United States until 2009. Once the film appeared in a DVD collection available to the West, American audience members began to clamor for screenings of the film. It has since received overwhelmingly-positive reviews from American audiences and has gained a cult-like following in the country.
Between the time that the project was given the green light by Toho, and when the film was completed, director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi produced several successful projects based on the story. He turned it into a commercially-successful manga and radio drama; he also spun off a number of product tie-ins before the film was ever released. Obayashi did this because he wasn't Toho's first choice to direct the project. However, after no one else would approach the project, and the tie-ins became successful, Toho eventually let Obayashi direct, bypassing the traditional hiring system.
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