"Kaidan" is a part of a ghost's stories anthology produces by the Japanese master of J-horror Takashige Ichise. Alongside with the great Shimizu's" Reincarnation" and the disappointing Kurosawa's "Retribution", "Kaidan" forms a trilogy that the producer wants as a reflection of the best that Japanese horror movies can offer. Unfortunately, "Kaidan" is the worst of the three movies, and Nataka doesn't manage to create fear as he successfully did in "Dark Water" or in his rightfully most famous movie : "Ring".
"Kaidan" is an homage to the classical romantic horror stories that Japanese studios produced in the fifties and sixties. It begins with an elaborated black and white narration, that tells an old samurai/ghost tale in a classical Japanese Kabuki style. But soon after this beautiful introduction, the actual story really starts, ans if almost as if all this introductory sequence had took all the talent of Nakata. It mostly deals with a young itinerant salesman, that convinces an older singing teacher to marry him, in the medieval Japan where such a socially disturbing weeding like this one wasn't easy. When she dies, women easily felt in love with the young boy, whereas his love is doomed by his previous wife...
The story is so classical that it becomes boring and predictable. The photography is just plain and gives a televisual look to the movie (whereas Shimizu gave an amazing visual touch to his one), and the direction is quite the same : unoriginal and even sometimes lazy (whereas Kurosawa used a very inventive use of space in in movie, and a very inventive direction).
But to me, the worst element of this movie might be the lead actor, Kikunosuke Onoe, who's supposedly a charismatic character in the movie. But he's really got a enormous lack of charisma and never manage to give any credibility or substance to to his character and the story he carries. He's supposedly a master of a old Kabuki technique, but he apparently failed to transpose it on the big screen. Or I may have lacked the culture the subtility of his play required. Anyway, I just found it quite boring, and nearly felt asleep while watching his Kabuki plays.
All in all, "J-Horror" isn't a really good introduction to the Japanese modern ghosts movies. If the directors are all good, their works here look a lot like a repetition of their previous movies, that were far better. So Shimizu's "Grudge", Kurosawa's "Kairo" and Nakata's "Ring" still stay the best of the Jap'Horror movie collection.
