BURNT OFFERINGS (1976) - if THE SHINING was a TV movie

BURNT OFFERINGS

(1976, USA)

Hard to say whether this chiller will work for you, but it sent chills up and down my spine when I first saw it. Particularly when Oliver Reed's past comes back to haunt him...

I dusted the DVD off to remind myself of Robert Cobert's soundtrack, which has just debuted on CD (buy it here, from Screen Archives). The composer worked on many other of producer/director Dan Curtis' projects, including The Night Stalker and The Norliss Tapes TV movies. Curtis managed scary miracles on TV budgets, but I think this is his best work.

A family rent a house and grounds for the summer. It looks like it'll cost more than they can afford, but the owners offer it to them cheap on a single condition, that they look after an old relative in the attic. Sounds simple enough. What could possibly go wrong?

The father (Oliver Reed) is once again troubled by nightmares from his childhood. His young son gets scared by his father's behaviour. Grandma starts wasting away and mother can't stay away from the old lady upstairs. Living there affects each of the occupants in different ways...

After Burgess Meredith and Dub Taylor have left the stage with their comic overacting, the story settles down to some serious, unsettling scares. A simple day by the swimming pool becomes a living nightmare. Another nightmare seems to take reality... 

But is it a haunting, is it the house itself, or something living inside? It's impossible to watch without thinking of The Shining. There's confusion between past and present, a thematic preoccupation with photographs and an almost identical premise.

The Shining (1980) is of course in a different league as a film. But as a story, Stephen King hasn't looked very far back for inspiration. Robert Marasco's book was published in 1973. King's book was published in 1977, a year after Burnt Offerings was out in US cinemas. There's even a tantalising shot of Oliver Reed unable to face his typewriter and a sheaf of blank paper. Ahem.

It can't hope to compete with Jack Nicholson's performance and Stanley Kubrick's visuals or his budget. It makes Burnt Offerings look more like a TV movie, even though it wasn't. Many other lower budget movies of the 1970s were almost indistiguishable from the TV 'look'. But Oliver Reed didn't do TV (except disastrous chat shows), and you didn't get this amount of blood on the TV...

This scary house film also predates The Amityville Horror (1979) and for my money, was and is far scarier. I also recently watched Let's Scare Jessica To Death recently, expecting scares. But while it had an eerie visual quality that Burnt Offerings lacks, I didn't find it nearly as creepy as many reviews had suggested.

Oliver Reed is suitably restrained here, great at being scared and effortless at being threatening. Karen Black is director Dan Curtis' lucky charm here, after appearing in three different roles in the memorable Trilogy of Terror, back when TV horror movies could terrify. Black more recently appeared in the less restrained House of 1,000 Corpses. 

Lee Montgomery, as the son, is that rare talent, an unannoying child actor, also the lynchpin of rat horror epic Ben (1972). Bette Davis (Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, The Nanny, The Anniversary) is shockingly good in a transformation from sprightly to unsightly - allowing herself to gradually be shown wearing less and less make-up. Extremely brave considering what she finally looks like...

The house and grounds used for filming can be visited just south of San Francisco as The Dunsmuir House in Oakland. The same site used as the mortuary in the Phantasm movies. Again, Burnt Offerings got there first.

Having enjoyed this in the cinema and on TV, I was disappointed by the region 1 DVD released by MGM in 2003. It's 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, but the framing is too tight and the compression really poor, distractingly laggy in the darker scenes, the transfer darker than the NTSC VHS. The DVD does however offer a commentary track with Dan Curtis, co-writer William F. Nolan (Logan's Run), and Karen Black.

After all these years, I've no idea why it's called Burnt Offerings, it might as well be called House...

And avoid any trailers - they'll ruin it completely...

JU-ON: WHITE GHOST, JU-ON: BLACK GHOST (2009) - a homage to video horror

JU-ON: WHITE GHOST

(2009, Japan, Shiroi Roujo)

JU-ON: BLACK GHOST

(2009, Japan, Kuroi Shoujo)

Two new films for the tenth anniversary of the Grudge saga...

For me, Takashi Shimizu's Japanese Grudge movies provided more scares than the Ring movies. Even the first two shot-on-video films, commonly referred to as Ju-on: the Curse 1 and 2, were creepy as hell. Together with the US remakes, the various different incarnations of The Grudge are easily confused - I laid it all out here.
The story began as a mystery centred on a suburban house. Everyone who visited the house was scared to death - if they left the house before they died, their own homes would become similarly cursed. As the story leapt forwards and backwards in time, following different visitors and their families, a picture emerged of the original events that sparked off the curse, as well as tracking how far it had spread.

Shot in an actual house in the suburbs of Tokyo, Takashi Shimizu's first four films turned everyday surroundings into nightmares. The attic, the landing, windows, cupboards and stairs all became terrifying locations for full-on scary, haunting, gory terror.

Last year, to mark the tenth anniversary of the 'series', two more Ju-on films appeared, produced the same way as the first two, by shooting cheaply on location and on video. With two different directors, the video-look distances these from Shimizu's current movie series. He's still promising a third Grudge movie for Japan, not to be confused with the American The Grudge 3, which wasn't directed by Shimizu. Not confusing at all.



Ju-on: White Ghost and Black Ghost unfold like the classic Ju-ons, with the narratives shifting back and forth in time, changing with each cut-to-black chapter break. But these new stories aren't closely linked to the old ones. There's a completely new house and I was disappointed that (almost) none of the regular characters appear to link it all back to the original 'grudge'.

In White Ghost, the jumpy scares kick in quickly after a shaky (camerawork) start. But it tries too hard and too often to make us jump, resulting in a series of hit and miss scares. The new 'face' of the grudge verges on the humorous because she keeps popping up repeatedly... and carrying a basketball. Basketballs have never been scary, still aren't.




Other distractions include the Christmas setting which has zero bearing on the story. It doesn't help that the characters put candles on their Christmas cake and blow them out as if making a birthday wish. Why? Now I'm used to characters in horror movies acting illogically, but several of the characters' motivations are quite puzzling. It's especially hard to believe any couple would start French-kissing just after one of them has puked!

Thematically, the method of the Ju-on curse also seems to have shifted, from ghosts killing people, to people killing people, with some unwelcome hints of incestuous paedophilia thrown in.




Black Ghost is a continuation, but is less intricately cross-connected with White Ghost the way all the previous films intertwined their characters' lives... and deaths. This is scarier, better shot and better paced, but also strays further from the Ju-on mythos into Tomie territory, with the problems of corpse disposal, a mysterious foetal cyst, and even the classic Tomie signature image - the head in the bag!




This new pair isn't essential to the series and indeed lacks many of the core ingredients. I really miss the link back to the original house - and having Kayako lurking in the attic... But it's an interesting experiment, recalling the look, and viciousness, of the earliest chapters of the saga, (as well as some of the J-horrors that first followed Ring, back when shooting on video was far more common and obvious).

But the lack of quality of performance, creepy pace and intricate structure makes it regrettable that Shimizu isn't writing and directing. So I'll continue to look forward to his third Japanese Grudge movie.




Although released separately in Japan, these are wisely being sold as a double-bill on DVD in the UK, as both films last barely an hour.


Here's a spoilery, subtitled trailer on YouTube...

CURSE, DEATH & SPIRIT (1992) - Hideo Nakata warms up for RING

CURSE, DEATH & SPIRIT

(1992, Japan, TV)

Homework for fans of the original Ring

I'd read about this in The Ring Companion but never thought I'd get a chance to see it - there isn't even a DVD in Japan. Luckily Curse, Death & Spirit has been released in the US.


The choice of Hideo Nakata to direct the original horror movie that launched J-horror, Ring (1998), looks less like a lucky guess if you see some of his earlier work. Particularly this made-for-TV trilogy, and the movie Ghost Actress (1996, aka Don't Look Up). It all looks uncannily like preparation, as if he'd been set homework six years earlier.

These three short stories, barely twenty minutes each, were made for TV in 1992. They're full of scares and ideas in the same vein that Nakata would explore in Ring and Dark Water (2002).

The Cursed Doll - could have been exceptionally creepy, but the doll is shown too much and initially brought to life with some poor video effects. The story builds well to a climax that certainly has bite. It's all good practice for turning the otherwise ordinary rooms of a Japanese home into a scary place, looking like the house in the opening scenes of Ring.

The Spirit of Death - has a mother and son on a troubled camping trip, echoing the absent father scenario of Dark Water, and again up against a watery spirit. This has some original scares and benefits from the outdoor location.

The Haunted Inn - has three teenage girls book into an inn, one of which is playing with a video camera. Together they fall foul of the history of the building and end up tangling with a long-haired ghost.

The stories are too ambitious for the time and money available. With a rushed TV schedule, unsophisticated camerawork and lighting, these are lightly creepy at best. The basic video effects, especially in The Cursed Doll, almost looking like a work-in-progress. Given more resources, this would have been good to develop as a film project, the same way that Takeshi Shimizu's Grudge films graduated from video.

The acting is solid, Nakata already getting convincing performances from even the youngest actors - namely the little boy in The Spirit of Death.

These are mainly interesting in retrospect, because of the many familiar echoes of the director's later films (assuming the past can echo the future!). They're also mildly rewarding for some scares he hasn't yet reused, like the restless doll, the ghost in the mirror, and the sneaky spirit of the lake...

It looks very much like 1970s' TV - it's presented 4:3 full-frame. The video colours look pretty flat and ungraded, the picture hasn't been film-moded - all of which could have slightly helped the look. The DVD is presented by Asia Vision in the US.

In the UK, it can be found as a DVD extra on the Tartan UK release of Hideo Nakata's Chaos. (Thanks to Phil for that update).

Here's another review, with screengrabs, at Sarudama.

My coverage of the Ring phenomenon is here.


A loud, Japanese, spoilered trailer for Curse, Death & Spirit here on YouTube...

HAUNTED SCHOOL 4 (1999) - a great Japanese ghost story

HAUNTED SCHOOL 4
(1999, Japan, Gakko no kaidan 4)

One of the best, modern, Japanese ghost stories

After seeing Ring (1998) for the first time, I was soon scrabbling around for more non-English horror movies, led only by their titles and cover art. I started into the Japanese Haunted School movie series at the last film but, as it happens, the best of the bunch. These films are nothing to do with the 2007 Hong Kong horror Haunted School, produced by Andrew Lau, that was aimed at older teenagers.

Haunted School 4 is very different from the first three, with a far less patronising attitude and no goofy, infantile humour. Despite a cast made up mostly of children, the acting is solid and realistic, especially the little girl in the middle of it all. What's OK to scare Japanese children is still fairly strong for most adults, some of the shocks match Ring and even Korea's The Host. Surprisingly, the director, Hideyuki Hirayama, also made Haunted Schools 1 and 2.

There are so few similarities with the rest of the series that it's not really a sequel. No recurring characters, alive or dead. The story centres around a school, but that's about it. Here that's not even an existing building, but rather the ghostly memory of one.


Opening with a carefree game of hide-and-seek ('kakurenbo'), tragedy strikes in an impressive sequence with a horrifying climax. One of my favourite scenes in a Japanese horror, because it took me by surprise. Possibly because I was expecting a less hard-hitting, children's movie.

The story skips from the past to modern day, as a quiet coastal village is struck by a series of child disappearances... and a reappearance. Events so unlikely that they're dismissed by the adults, leaving the children to solve the mysteries. Why is there always an old man on the quayside staring at the sea? Why do some of the children keep hearing voices? What's going on at the school building that's closed for the holidays?

The hot and sunny seaside location, presumably in Okinawa, is popular as a holiday destination for Japanese families from the main island. A policeman demonstrates a huge heavy door in the huge storm defences, which closes with just a hand crank. There's also a scene showing the Japanese lantern festival, as departed relatives are remembered with a flotilla of floating lanterns.

There are many intricate and cleverly designed visual effects that use extensive digital composting and even a little CGI which still looks really convincing, at least on this unremastered DVD. But the FX designs and the ideas, together with the performances combine to create a ghost story that delivers very visual surprises and a few shocks. The genuine feeling of loss, portraying ghosts as 'once human' rather than vengeful monsters makes a refreshing change.

Beautifully shot 2.35 widescreen, with flashbacks in striking monochrome, some of the scene transitions were so cleverly done, I had to rewatch to check what I'd just seen.

The film really needs a title change, like if they lost the '4' and sold it to the US. A high number on a sequel makes it look like a bad movie - but this should be high on any list of Japanese ghost story movies.


The Hong Kong DVD I watched is transferred from a print that had English and Chinese burnt into it, rather than optional subtitles. These are poorly translated and hard to read against lighter backgrounds - but it's the only translated version that I know of. It's a non-anamorphic widescreen release, all-region NTSC.

I couldn't find many photos, but there are some screen grabs on this German site...

I've already done short reviews of the first Japanese Haunted School (1995), and Haunted School 3. But I'd recommend instead the Gakko No Kaidan anime series of 2000, sold on DVD as Ghost Stories in the US.

LOFT (2006) Kiyoshi Kurosawa's toys in the attic

LOFT
(2005, Japan, Shi no otome)

A young writer is sent to a remote house to concentrate on her next novel. But she notices some strangeness happening in the house opposite. Like a handsome man carrying what looks like a dead body in a sheet. Intrigued by both him and what he's doing, she investigates the house and discovers a 1000-year old corpse. The mummified body might also be connected to why she's started vomiting up black mud...

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo (Pulse) helped lead the J-horror boom - with even more creepiness than Ring and matching it's shock moments as well. I've kept trying his movies, enjoying Sakebi (Retribution) despite not fully understanding it. Kurosawa's films seem to fit inside the horror genre, but often meander into the world of arthouse, where symbolism and mood are often more important than story. I've enjoyed his films by immersing myself in their atmosphere, without concentrating too much on the intricacies of narrative and character and what he's actually trying to say.

But I'm annoyed with Loft. Spoiling a perfectly fine horror film in the last segment of the film. While slow-moving, there's plenty of scares and creep-outs, but suddenly the characters are acting all, well, out-of-character and the cameraman seems to, well, fall over. It then gets back on track after a strange series of creative freakouts, but the final capper to the whole film hangs on a very poor special effect, that could almost be an intentional joke, and a pratfall. I'm not amused.

You'll have probably seen the leading actors - Miki Nakatani as Reiko the writer, also played Mai in Ring and Ring 2 as well as starring in Memories of Matsuko. Etsushi Toyokawa as the distinctive-looking professor was also the black-clad super-baddie in Yokai Daisenso - The Great Goblin War.

This reviewer for Cinema Strikes Back identifies elements of satire in the film - I wish I'd known beforehand. But even accepting that the director is playing with the genre, there are several sloppy scare moments that simply look mis-timed (like the hand on the corner of the window, featured heavily in the posters).


Unsurprisingly, this hasn't been rushed into a DVD release in the west, despite the director's cult reputation and the intriguing trailer. I found this on DVD in Malaysia (from PMP) which has very good English subtitles, but the picture has been savagely cropped from widescreen to full screen by simply lopping off both sides (a crude 'centre-cut' to adapt the widescreen image to old-style TVs). Not the best way to see a carefully visual film, but the only subtitled DVD I know of.

Loft is one of those films that I'll need to read more about before I stand a chance of appreciating it. In the meantime, I'd better take a break and try out one of Kurosawa's non-horror movies. Tokyo Sonata looks very promising...

THE VANISHED (2006) - Japanese horror that's hard on the kids

THE VANISHED
(2006, Japan, Ame No Machi)

The horror genre of 'killer kids' is popular again, with recent movies like Them (Ils), The Strangers, Orphan, It's Alive and The Children. This Japanese horror is now a few years old, but I've only just found it subtitled. Far less gory than western horrors, it adds a little more creepiness.

Starting with some convincing shocks, where a little boy is stalked by a madman with a shovel. A sack is placed over the child's head - a visual reminder of The Orphanage, but this is a misleading similarity, capitalised on by the publicity art.

The boy's body floats away from this remote village and is discovered miles downstream. An autopsy shows up some bizarre results. Gutter press journalist Sota is sent to check out the story and hype up the supernatural angle, even if there isn't one. But for the first time in his career, he sees something genuinely uncanny. Not the least of which is a corpse with the insides of what looks like yellow cheese.

Tracing the body back to a remote area in the forest, he teams up with Fumiyo, a local journalist. She takes him to one of the few families left in a severely haunted village, where the local children, aren't really children at all...


Believability is strained early on as Sota sneaks some photos of the body in the morgue, using a noisy flash camera without the attendant noticing, eben though they're in the same room. It also unfortunately looks like Sota wants naked photos of the kid, rather than of the clues. Later on, further poor staging means that the heroes fail to notice a dead body in a small room.

The bizarre situation could also do with more backstory. Where in Japanese mythology are there vampires made of cheese? It's all creepy enough, but nothing is as strong as the opening scene. The eventual ending is drawn out and failed to chill.

Toshihiro Wada doesn't make the most of his character Sato, leaving various plot points rather muddled (like his attitude to the newspaper he works for). But Yoko Maki makes Fumiyo a more believable character, unfortunately completely underused, disappearing soon after she's introduced. The actress also made a lasting impression in Sway (Yureru), and the US version of The Grudge.

The Vanished is likeable for the unusual theme, and the potential of the story rather than where it ends up. The Malaysian DVD (from PMP) is widescreen but not anamorphic. English subtitles are rather stiffly worded and felt inaccurate in many scenes. Better translations would help it considerably, and I'd certainly reassess my opinions if there was ever a release in the West. It's also out on DVD in Hong Kong (cover art pictured at top).

A trailer (including plenty of spoilers), is here on DailyMotion.

TWILIGHT PHANTOM (2007) - a different Japanese ghost story

TWILIGHT PHANTOM
(2007, Japan, Ako-kuro)

This Japanese horror film felt very different, despite the familiar plot elements. The location of Okinawa, the large southern island of Japan, presents life very differently from the crowded apartments and uptight manners of Tokyo. They have legends about forest creatures, not urban myths about telephones and other gadgets. The climate is hot, the people more spread out and laid back.

After starting with a couple of solid scares, Twilight Phantom settled into a deceptively easy-going tale of young Misaki joining her husband-to-be, meeting his friends and family and settling into life in Okinawa. Their houses are less modern, but far less crowded than metropolitan life, surrounded by lush vegetation. The people are friendlier and informal with older relatives. It's a very different presentation of Japanese life.


I was settling into this attractive alternate lifestyle when one evening, someone's granny tells a ghost story. A local legend about the red-haired 'kijimuna', told round a late night fire. It's as if she's accidentally invoked a demon, as it seems to become a reality almost immediately. In a pair of extraordinary one-take scenes that horrify with their intensity and ferocity, the group of new friends find themselves facing a powerful evil...

The story then falls into a more familiar pattern, but the characters' real reactions and the naturalistic filming make it a very different experience than usual. It's also gorier than the typical Japanese ghost stories. It's as if everyone had tried very hard to avoid cliches while still sticking to the boundaries of the genre.


I'd been wanting to see this since it was first pointed out by Twitch.com under its Japanese name of Ako-kuro. Finally found it earlier this year under the misleading title of Twilight Phantom on a Malaysian DVD (cover art at top). It's a no-frills release, but has good English subtitles - available here from YesAsia. Though it's a great shame that it hasn't been picked up anywhere else... yet.

Here's a trailer on YouTube...

THE RING VIRUS (1999) - Asian remake of an Asian horror film

THE RING VIRUS
(1999, South Korea)

Celebrating (very nearly) four years of Black Hole Reviews with a blogaversary look at another film from the Ring phenomenon.

There are very few successful American remakes of South-East Asian horror films, so how do you feel about an Asian remake of an asian horror? The year after the Japanese smash hit Ring, it was remade with a Korean cast but co-produced by Japan. I'm not entirely sure why - I think they wanted to cash into the horror cycle with a domestic hit of their own. In any case, it's yet another retelling of the original story, mixing elements from both Koji Suzuki's book and Hideo Nakata's 1998 film. It also anticipates scenes from the American remake, The Ring (2002).



It begins with a young girl home alone. Her TV keeps switching itself on. She's also unnerved by a phone call from one friend and a text from another. They both seem to be in trouble. Then she hears something coming upstairs...

Reporter Sun-joo starts investigating her niece's death, becoming suspicious when she learns that three of her friends died on the same evening. The only expert who has any clue as to a possible link is the eccentric Dr Choi, whose theories are seen as far-fetched.

But as Sun-joo visits the lodge where the four friends last met, she finds a videotape and makes the mistake of watching it. It tells her she's going to die in a week unless...


If you've seen Ring or The Ring, you might not want to see another version, but it's interesting to see an Asian remake. While it starts off much the same as Ring, the accent is far more on the sexual possibilities presented in the novel. Indeed, every early scene mentions sex. Though she's never met Dr Choi before, he starts asking personal questions. The teenagers who die in the car were about to 'arrive'. The ghost, here called Park Eun-soo, is portrayed as more alluring than frightening. Her flashbacks are about her sexuality, her history is swapped from being a drama student (in the novel) to working in a seedy nightclub - a marvellous, atmospheric scene that echoes Psycho with a twist... It's the only notably different scene in this version. An early hint of the sexual aspect of the film is in an art gallery at the start, where Sun-joo is interviewing a bisexual artist about her work. It's all much more 'liberated' about sex than the Japanese version.


While the movie starts well, with some solid scares, it turns more into a mystery than a horror, even missing an opportunity with the scary videotape itself. The images are more like memories, indistinct and fading into each other. This is more 'realistic' but harder to see. The lack of clear imagery makes subsequent discoveries less creepy. In Ring, it was always chilling to see something from The Tape appear in real life. Gone too is the progressive emergence of the figure from the well that creeped me out. The flashback to the press conference, another chance for a shock moment, is also curiously changed so that no deaths occur.

So less horror and more mystery. Fair enough. But even the thread of their investigation, which started off so carefully detailed and plotted, then skips several important discoveries until we arrive back at exactly the same ending as the others. Not quite sure of what their logic is or how the curse has spread.

The special effects are just as good, but the carefully set up chain of creepy realisations drain the key climactic scenes of their power. You might not even understand some of the logic towards the end, unless you've seen another version.


This is well-acted, though Dr Choi's introduction is rather too weird. While the cast are largely unfamiliar, famous for TV rather than film, you may recognise Bae Du-na (as Sadako/Park Eun-soo), the olympic archer in The Host (2006), or the girlfriend in Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002) and action thriller Tube (2003). It's her face that graces The Ring Virus cover art in Korea (at the top).

Beautifully photographed, with some disorientating angles and fantastic island locations, it's well-directed by Kim Dong-bin. My main problem is with his script (like making the two leads no longer ex-husband and wife), the story structure in the middle, and the fewer scares. But it's an interesting early alternate take on the Sadako mythos, with some unique dramatisations of scenes from the novel. He also made Red Eye (2005), the South Korean ghost story set on a train, not the American thriller (also 2005) set on a plane.


The Ring Virus is available on DVD in the US and UK.

My overview of the many adaptions in the Ring phenomenon is here.


A trailer for on YouTube...

DARK WATER (2002) - more ghosts from Hideo Nakata

DARK WATER
(2002, Japan, Honogurai mizu no soko kara)

From the director of Ring, from the writer of Ring...

I recently read Koji Suzuki's Birthday, which I didn't know was a collection of short stories. I then read his Dark Water, which turned out to be the same. This helps explain why the Japanese movie Dark Water feels a little insubstantial. It's not based on a novel, but a rather brief tale. That's not to say that it's not good, but it's rather simple.

Yoshimi is going through a difficult divorce and is forced to find somewhere new to live. She's also trying to retain custody of her little girl, Ikuko. She finds an inexpensive but slightly run-down apartment to rent. But no sooner does she move in and start to look around for work, the history of the building starts to invade her life. On top of everything else, she's rather highly-strung. Nervous of noise, people and even rain... which seems to be dogging her life. Water, water, everywhere...

As the two of them settle into their new home, dripping water coming from the ceiling is the least of their problems. It sounds like there's a little girl running around in the apartment above. The estate agent hasn't told them everything about the recent history of the building - they're finding out the hard way. Why does she keep seeing a distant shadow of a little girl in a raincoat...


While the mystery of the haunting is easy to figure out, it's interesting to see how it develops. I even thought that the scares started too early on. The first time Yoshimi looks round the apartment, a ghost follows her up in the lift - before she's even moved in! Considering how sleight the story is, padded out by the divorce case, I was surprised that the supernatural didn't appear more gradually.

Director Hideo Nakata had tried to stay away from horror and ghosts, fearing that he would get typecast after his huge hit with Ring (1998). He was lured back to make the sequel Ring 2, but also made Chaos and Sleeping Bride. With Dark Water, he shows that Ring was no fluke, and easily conjures up scares with a minimum of effort. What initially disappointed me was that the climax was not only predictable, but fell far short of the shocks of Ring. In fact, the eventual climax felt weak - just the opposite of what I expected. I certainly liked Dark Water far more on a second viewing. Just forget the hype on the DVD cover and don't expect another Ring.

The producers were obviously trying to monopolise on the link with Ring, even using actors from the Ring universe. The nervy Yoshimi is played by Hitomi Kuroki who also starred in the first Ring TV series. She's in the current 20th Century Boys trilogy and Hideo Nakata's recent Kaidan.

The distinctive-looking Isao Yatsu, as the ancient building superintendent, had been in Ring 2 and later appeared in Takashi Shimizu's Grudge movies. A great face for haunting horrors.

Once again, Nakata gains an excellent, natural performance from the young actress playing six-year old Ikuko. More recently, little Rio Kanno was in another horror, Noroi The Curse.


Dark Water is available in the UK and US on DVD, but it's easily confused with the 2005 American remake of the same title. The English translation of the book is available in hardback and paperback.

I'm curious, but I haven't made a priority of seeing the remake, even though I like Jennifer Connelly. Anyone out there seen it and thought it was worth a look?

SPIRAL (1998) - first and best of the RING sequels

SPIRAL

(1998, Japan, Rasen)

Continuing a series of reviews from the Ring phenomenon

The success of Ring (1998) in Japan lead to a successful sequel Ring 2 (1999) and a prequel Ring 0 (2000). But their stories were drastically different to Koji Suzuki's original books, and ignored the events of the very first sequel, Spiral, which was actually released at the same time as Ring. While Ring was immediately popular, Spiral wasn't, encouraging producers to pursue a different storyline for Ring 2 the following year.

Ring 2 gave audiences more of what they (we) wanted - more videotapes and more twitchy, scary Sadako. But Spiral primarily uses ideas from Suzuki's second novel, with a subtler but ultimately far more horrifying scenario where Sadako could become more powerful than you could possibly imagine...


Spiral begins the day after the events of Ring, with a pathologist being called in to perform an autopsy on a former colleague, the latest victim of Sadako. He finds himself haunted by his former friend and how he died, mixed in with his suicidal despair over the accidental drowning of his young son (shades of Suzuki's Dark Water).

The cause of death makes no sense to him, neither does talk of a cursed videotape. He teams up with a journalist to investigate, while more and more witnesses continue to die mysteriously.

When Sadako appears, she's not shrouded in black hair and a shroud, but a sexy nightdress. Another change of tactics is to spread her curse in other ways besides boring old videotape...


When I first saw this, when it was confusingly being sold around Asia as Ring 2: The Spiral, I was disappointed with the lack of videotape deaths and the twitchy, jerky Sadako that we all love. But over the years, and being less impressed by re-watching Ring 2, Spiral is now my favourite of the sequels. A better story, that doesn't suffer by repeating the highlights of the first film.

This is as much a medical thriller as a horror. But the scares are subtle and effective. The growing realisation of what Sadako is planning is both dramatic and very powerful, reminiscent of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (Kairo). Director Joji Iida went on to direct Another Heaven and the post-apocalyptic Dragonhead.

It's also interesting for Ring fans to see the same characters, with the same actors, following completely different paths than they take in Ring 2. Suzuki's books are so full of ideas that the stories about Sadako can spin off in many directions.

As a title, Spiral is an undescriptive name and the original generic poster art didn't help. Ring: Virus would have been a more apt title, but confusingly the South Korean remake (1999) was called that. Speaking of which, I'll review that one next. Eventually I'll also plough through the TV series made of Rasen in 1999.

Spiral is available in the US Ring Anthology boxset, under the Japanese name, Rasen. It also used to be available in the UK as Spiral (artwork at top).

There's plenty of screengrabs, but a less good review over at The Ring Cycle site.

Links to the other Ring movie reviews are here on the Ring Overview.

4bia (2008) - patchy Thai horror anthology

4bia
(2008, Thailand, See Prang)

I'm quite reluctant to write this review. I want to encourage Thai movies internationally, especially since the country is so keen on the supernatural genre. But I'm duty bound to write an honest review, to compensate for the growing hype, from both the east and the west. 4bia may have been successful in Thailand, with a sequel in the works already, but most of the good reviews seem to be saying 'this is very good... for a Thai movie'. Yes, 4bia has elements that are rare in Thai cinema - car stunts and CGI characters, for instance. While this might be impressive in Thailand, I don't honestly think it'll be at all satisfying for regular horror fans. 4bia only has one story out of four that I can recommend.

It's made up of four short horror stories, all by different Thai directors. While the title is a twist on phobia, the common thread is ghosts, as is usual with Thai horror.


The first segment is called Loneliness (though the onscreen title on the Malay DVD was Happiness). I was disappointed that the story centred on a mobile phone, now a ragged Asian horror cliche. The pace also started quite slowly, as a young woman with her leg in a cast starts getting text messages from a mysterious admirer. Just as I was getting restless, the tale started to get successfully creepy. This was interesting considering the director's previous films included The Iron Ladies films, basically feelgood comedies. But the carefully built atmosphere was shattered by a clumsy shock moment from a shoddy video effect and a confusing sting in the tale.


Second up was Tit For Tat, an example of the more gruesome wave of Thai horror that aspires to ladle out bloody shock effects. A schoolboy is victimised by a nasty gang of bullies and takes revenge using black magic. But this is presented with fast-cutting, shaky camerawork, pumped-up colours and a barrage of computer-generated effects, some successful (a whirlwind of paper) and some definitely not (CGI characters). The uneven special effects distracted me from the already flimsy story.

Best of the lot is the third story, In The Middle. Directed with a sure hand, from a director of Alone and the superb Shutter, Banjong Pisanthanakun. This is well-paced, well-acted and largely original. Four boys are on a camping trip in the forest, scaring each other with ghost stories in the tent at night and teasing each other about which horror films they've seen, (cue some smart in-jokes). But next day they have a Deliverance-style accident and the trip turns into a nightmare. This was easily the best - well made, scary and didn't insult horror fans.


Lastly is Last Fright where a stewardess attends to royalty on a specially chartered flight. But the princess starts ill-treating the attendant and everything escalates rather alarmingly. In the story's mission to scare, logic goes completely out the window in order to create any scares. Like part two, the director cheats the viewer every whichway, in order to get the shocks. The premise of royalty of any country (in this case a fictitious one) hiring a huge passenger jet all for one person is far-fetched to begin with. An appalling CGI plane sabotaged the segment, while the interior set was just about convincing.

So, a mixed bag, above average horror for Thailand, just about good enough as a TV film, OK for DVD. It's an accurate overview of Thai approaches to horror, with some over-familiar subjects. I'd like to see the directors of Dorm and Victim invited to the next batch.

The Malay DVD from Golden Satellite (pictured at top) is non-anamorphic widescreen. The English subtitles were well-translated but non-removable. Any curse words were censored with a silly black blob over the offending words. This could indicate that the gore had also been cut down for Malaysia. Maybe the promised UK DVD release later this year will have more gore (in the second story?).

As I'm still feeling guilty, in the name of balance here's the gushy review that inspired me to write this, and a far more balanced and informative review from Wise Kwai.

GUARD POST / GP506 (2008) - from the director of R-POINT

GUARD POST / GP 506
(2008, South Korea)

Su-Chang Kong wrote and directed both this and R-Point (2004) - both are horror films set in the army. I was impressed and scared by R-Point and wondered if this soldier's tale was going to be similar. The strengths of both films are that you're not sure which particular horror genre you're heading into. A slasher movie? Zombies? Ghosts?

Guard Point begins at the end of a massacre, at a remote concrete complex near the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. A military investigation team arrives to discover a sole survivor drenched in blood, holding an axe. They're given 24 hours to determine what happened. Did everyone kill each other, or did one man do it all? Is he mad, or possessed?


But as the scares began, I was disappointed to see a few overly familiar horror cliches, especially after the originality of the surprises in R-Point. The plot was certainly clever, but maybe too convoluted, because I started to get lost as the story moved between timelines before and after the massacre.


When explanations finally arrived, they didn't quite answer everything, and I was left sorting out red herrings from loose ends. The narrative was hard-going and requires concentration - with many sudden flashbacks, it's not always easy to follow. Also, with a cast of four dozen characters, all soldiers, variously covered in blood and camouflage make-up, it wasn't easy to make out who's who.


But it's a handsome looking film, with a convincing cast and solid, steadily-increasing shocks. It's certainly far more eventful than R-Point, and far gorier. Maybe I'll understand it better second time around. If it was from Thailand I'd be very impressed. But from Korea, I'd expect to be more satisfied. Boy, am I hard to please sometimes.


Guard Post was released last year on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK by Cine-East.

Here's the trailer on YouTube, without subtitles though.