SPOOPYWEEN DAY 2 TEMPLE!!!!

Day 2

TEMPLE

When three American college students take a trip to Japan, only good things can happen. Especially when warned by locals NOT to visit a place. I mean what is the worst that could happen? You end up having your video removed on youtube because you went walking through suicide forest and found a body then decided to laugh about it and show it?

I still have no idea who the hell that dude was that did that, and I don’t care, but still my point stands valid. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

Well

Given my knowledge base on Japanese horror.

You can end up in a grudge house

Watching a cursed video

Using a locker where someone stuffed and unwanted baby into

Find an evil Buddhist cult that summons the mother of suffering

Find a village where babies were sacrificed on the reg to make demons happy

Take photos with a cursed camera that kills you

Stumble into a magical village that turns people into pigs where you serve the dead

But aside all of that. What REALLY could happen? They have a memorable time? Create memories? Get an STD because someone just had to go fuck a horse? What happened to the American spirit of adventure?

Honestly I hate American tourist more than anything. The entire time I spent living in France the worst people I encountered were all American dickbags, and again when we live in a society where someone on youtube gets views for throwing pokeballs and people. I mean goddamn.

Y’all don’t need jesus.

Y’all need demons!

That’s what the youth of the world is missing today. Some good ol demons. You wanna go travel abroad and be a prick? Have fun dealing with demons. You wanna take a silly pic of your ass hanging out at a sacred temple? Here’s some demons to take home with you. Oh, you thought it was funny scratching your ass against a sacred rock and sending it falling down hill? That’s super, Take some demons with you, enjoy the waking nightmares.

I’m tellin you people, demons are the answer.

Anyway.

So our next film is another I have yet to see but looked interesting in the generic it could be funny haha or it could be sad bad, but maybe it’ll be good. Let’s hope either way it’s entertaining. As eluded to the film is about a group of American  college goers who travel to Japan and find themselves in a less than ideal situation. This is a tried and true formula, but it has the benefit of straying off the tried and true path, and bringing us cursed kids so. That’s always fun. This little film came out in 2017 and its rating thus far is a true wonder. On the one hand, Amazon rates it a solid 4 and a half stars. On the other hand IMDB gives it 3.7 out of 10.

The only number I’m enjoying is the run time is 79 minutes. That’s already a win in my book.

So lets pack out bags, grab some snacks and watch some dumb ass Americans do what they gonna do.

The film

Oct 1968 six children go missing for three days, some time later a monk is found dead in a temple and the police suspect murder most foul. Meanwhile our film opens in present day where we see a police manhunt underway in the woods, headed toward the same temple presumedly where the monk was found dead some years ago. They are investigating the area pretty heavily and one unfortunate female officer stumbles into the temple, hearing distorted laughter from unseen children. Followed by a leaflet on the floor, dripping with blood. Amongst the carnage our officers also find a video camera. Oooh daddy smells found footage coming up soon.

From there we enter a hospital where two men, await the arrival of the one survivor found from that temple. They are nameless for now and simply called. Well. Exactly what we can see they somewhat are. Faceless.

I don’t care if the rest of this film is crappy or super low budget. This opening with the hospital and two men interviewing him? Is a great shot setup. The man is wheeled out in a plastic bubble wheel chair. The plastic is visible enough to just make out ‘some’ of his features. Which are horrific. You can see he seems to be missing all the flesh surrounded his mouth, and possible his eyes.

The two men interviewing him are very obviously disturbed and work to question the guy. One of the interviewers serves as an interpreter, and the other man is a professor. With the questioning underway and little progress made, the professor begins to play the found take and with that, ol’ faceless starts having himself some flashbacks and we are off to fun town backstory. Population new character. Kate.

Kate is a university student majoring in Comparative religion. She wants to go to Japan to photograph cursed villages and demon temples.

Well she doesn’t out right say that, she says she wants to photograph obscure Shinto shrines, but we all know she means cursed villages and demon temples. So we know. We know.

Anyway she’s planning on dragging her friend Kevin to hell with her on this trip, which who wouldn’t want to be distracted by demons after recently dealing with losing their brother? Sounds like the ideal vacation.

Well now we are 5 days from the end result of Mr Faceless losing his face, and Katey dragging her friends to a demon shrine.

And after just spending long enough for a montage with Katey, Christopher and her man boy James? I can safely say nothing of great value is lost with these three.

We have Katey roaming Tokyo in an open blouse happy having breast, while the other two guys awkwardly go around eating food, exploring Tokyo with the best synth music you can conjure at home. I am sorry but Katey is just. They strike me as a needy friend who cares more about their own fun than they do anything else. But they try. They try.

The dynamic of this group is. Perfect for creating problems.

Both in real life and in this film. Which its supposed to, obviously. But it’s also annoying in general.

We have Kate and her friend Christopher. They have been friends forever and ever. No big problem there. She hasn’t seen him in forever, so she wants to have him along. Christopher comes off as a caring friend, just trying to get through the loss of his brother, while also harboring the feels for his friend Kate. Friend. Kate.

James is the boy she’s currently fucking and does best when its just the two of them, not so much Christopher and them. He’s a bit insecure and highly questions Christopher having a friendship with Katey. Why? Because he believes and from his own experience. No man. No male on this earth. Would have a hot friend like her, without having tried to at least once make a move on her. So right away James and Christopher are at odds with one another. James lets it be known he doesn’t buy their innocent friendship and his behavior as the soft spoken Japanese speaking gentle friend. He knows a loaded penis trap when he sees one.

It's something that gets tiring in these films after a while because jealousy is a pretty lazy cue to land on in horror, but more so when you want to play it off as a “is there or isn’t there’ love triangle. It just doesn’t always play well.

The problem here is that Katey and her acting is, not really selling it that, well. UNLESS there is a plot twist later on. Katey comes off as dismissing the fact Christopher might harbor a secret boner for her. She doesn’t so much put her boy toys mind at ease, as she does use it as an excuse for sexy time and dismisses it. Which either means she’s completely oblivious to Christopher and his potential secret friend boner, or she’s just one of those people that likes putting two dogs in a ring and making them fight over a crap piece of meat. Women by and large know when you want to bang them, and they handle this appropriately especially with friends. So. How she acts toward this. Both when having it brought to her attention and after? It could’ve been handled better.

That’s all.

Unless there is a huge plot twist and her and Christopher are going to get James killed by demons. I don’t know.

The fun honestly starts up once our trio of ready to die meat sacks make it to a Japanese store where they comb through various second hand items. One of which Katey finds and flips through. An old tattered journal which details a shrine. Well how about that. She came here wanting to photograph shrines. She tells Christopher to buy this book immediately as he might be able to take them to this gateway to hell. Only for the nice shop owner to suddenly tighten her sphincter and utter out “No sale, no sale”

She seems to realize these two picked up one of the books from the cursed death and demons table. Which is always somehow right next to the menga section. Well she ask them where they found it, tells Christopher it’s a bad book, and he explains how its apparently to do with Kitsune’s temples and such.

Kitsune’s for those not familiar, are Japanese folk fox tails about people, usually women who transform into foxes, or vice versa. They are shapeshifters and tricksters. So we are off to a good start.

Of course the moment Katey is told ‘No sale’ she takes this to mean she has to bargain with the lady. She has to offer her more money. But this lady stops her American bullshit, slapping down the law with a “No sale, we are closed now, please leave.”

So bam. Shot down. Good job lady. Protect people from the curse table. Or maybe just move the curse table to the back.

Well we need to further setup conflict here so. Katey is going to be a tricky Kitsune herself and force James and Christopher to spend time together. Because forcing two awkward guys who want nothing to do with each other to spend time together, can only go well.

Which it does! Naturally.

The two go to a dance club, Christopher is drinking and hitting it off pretty okay with a local lady so, good for him. And hell James is doing alright too. He’s found a cute girl to dance with. And she’s fine with him hugging her ass while they dance too. And though she may or may not speak English. They decide to use their tongues to talk to one another as they begin deeply kissing.

Christopher, being the good friend he is. Decides to film this. Because he’s an artist and as such you capture life, as life happens. Also it’ll certainly not come up later. At all.

But he’s not done there. Oh no. See. A wise man. Would say, make your recording, take it back and show your friend, get her to break up with a guy she dragged to Japan, and spend the next few days getting over it together.

Instead, Christopher is playing Mega Simp, he will pocket his recording for now, and he is headed out for the shop they were told to leave before. Yep. He is intent on buying that book. Because why bring a girl flowers after you help get rid of her shitty boyfriend, when you can bring her the cursed book she wanted?

It all makes sense.

So he finds the lady gone, but her 9 year old son is there and sells the cursed book to the stupid American. But he can’t head back yet. Oh no. He needs liquid courage. So its off to the bar for a shot of whiskey while he looks over the cursed book.  Landing us smack dab in the “I know this place, it’s cursed!’ story time. See the bartender knows the temple in this book, somehow. He says in fact that his village was above this place….or below it.

Even more fortunate. A drinking patron beside Christopher. Tells him he too knows this temple. And. You guessed it. “Its bad place. Very bad.” In fact he has a line I actually really liked because it was unique from the usual ‘Your all doomed’ lore master. He tries telling Christopher as best he can. “It will make you…sick. Do not go there. Many other temples in Japan.” It’s simple, to the point and it doesn’t give much away. Just enough like with the shopkeep as to warrant taking caution.

So here we go. We have a book, that so far lead to a woman looking like she just shit out a 20ft statue of Buddha at the fact she even had the book. A bartender who doesn’t want to talk about the village, and a patron telling you it’s a horrible place, stay the fuck away. Coupled this with the fact he is now having deadly worrying visions. Like a homeless lady with missing eyeballs and pocks on her back. Chanting people around him, and genuinely something creepy. When he reaches their little home and places the cursed book by his friend. We see a very creepy elongated hand and clawed fingers nearby watching over Christopher.

But he passes out with the glimpses of a bright shrine, screaming death, and darkness All of which are perfectly normal after a night of drinking in Japan.

Of course he wakes up the next morning and not a damn thing is different or wrong. He just wakes up to the gleeful giggles of Katey flipping through a book, written in Japanese that she can’t read or understand. She thanks her friend for this, James surprisingly doesn’t even try to take credit, and we discover he told Katey that he left the club early and was going to tell Christopher but, Christopher was busy with a lady friend.

Now.

This would be a good moment, some might say, a great moment. To bring up “Oh that reminds me. Katey? Come look at this video.” And stare at James as you let him know without saying, that you got him in 4k cheating on his girlfriend. She can watch the clip, get pissed off, tell him off, and the healing can begin.

No Christopher doesn’t do this. Because we need to murder James, that’s my only guess. Instead Christopher stares at James “Oh? A friend? Ah…” and that’s that.

This is just going splendidly.

But Christopher can’t linger on such trivial things as saving his friend from a cheating piece of shit. Instead he needs to win more simp points. So he tells his good friend he knows where this village in the book is, and he can get them there. So off we goooooo!

Yep. Despite all warnings these fuckers are going off to an adventure in demon town.

Does it get any better from here? Fuck no!

It gets goddamn hysterical is what it gets people.

Once at this village, he’s immediately asked why the hell they are there. He says they need a room and leaves it at that. So they’re told, semi politely where to go. They happen upon the towns elder and he also ask very politely, just what the fuck are these bitches doing in their town. So Christopher decides to give a good ol razzle dazzle of truth. He says they came to see the shrine. Well this interest the old man. He’s not all smiles, or doom and gloom. He’s rather chill about it, and begins telling them a story for Christopher to translate.

Long back, Hitoshi, a boy. Went up to that shrine, he saw many things. Many things. He had visions. When he came back down from the temple back into town? He was holding his eyes in his hands. Holding his actual eyes, in the palms of his hands.

This is what they are told.

Christopher. The sweet summer simp. The gentle natured translator for the group. Hears this. And translates it to his friends.

“He um, he talked about a boy named Hitoshi who went to the shrine and saw things….I don’t understand him, uh, here lets go get ourselves a room”

I am now 86% sure Christopher is going to get Katey and James killed. Or at the least James.

I’ve watched enough ID channel to know this guy is plotting their murders.

When someone tells you “he came back holding his eyes”, and they see you make the motion of covering your eyes. So they shake their head no, and show you what they mean. By holding to mandarins in their hands, and saying “like this”

There is. Very little room. For misinterpretation folks.

But Christopher excuses that and just, yeah. Tells his group he doesn’t get it, lets move on and get some rest. Which they can! They find a nice little cozy spot, a friendly lady with blankets and soke. And also a tenant with no eyes by the name of Hitochi. How convenient.

Well of course he talks to Hitochi. And Hitochi tells him, well nothing he hasn’t already heard. He most importantly. Tells him about the missing children.

Children went out and played in the mountain. It got dark and they never came back. Some  time later, they found a wondering monk visiting the temple there. He was questioned about the missing kids. They did not believe his answers. So the village people killed him. Now every year, the town lights candles, and prays that the children will come back down from the mountain and return to them.

A long with the same warning he got from the lady who runs the place of “Don’t fucking go near that place you dumbass”

Thankfully Christopher is too stupid to listen, or to set on murder to care. Instead he sees the young boy who was at the book store that sold him the journal his mother wouldn’t sell him. That’s not weird at all. Actually it is so Christopher ask him why he is there. Naturally the boy tells him he lives in the village. So that’s why he’s there. Sure. Makes sense. Kids not at all a demon.

Well if that wasn’t enough weirdness, it gets better. We got you covered.

Christopher should be.

Keyword now is, should be. Considering all this information and the fact people are all telling them DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT $200 DOLLARS!! YOU GONNA DIE BOY!

Is he going to? Does he? Does he take all of these factors into consideration and, of course you know where I’m going with this. Fuck no.

What is he doing instead? He films his friend Katey getting deep dicked by her cheating boyfriend James.

This mother fucker, this dude, who has been told. Shown visions, and knows they are in a cursed place. Is filming his friend getting fucked. Which raises the question.

Is he just filming all of this because he considers life as it happens to be beautiful? Like a plastic bag floating in the wind being the most beautiful thing in the world?

Or

Again.

Call up Joe Kenda and tell him we got a murder story for him.

Is Christopher plotting the murder of these two bitches. Or at least James.

I am 93% sure that is his intent.

Because goddamn man. If your plan is to hold all the winning cards. You take your secret boner girlfriend to a place she wanted to go, get her a cursed book she really wanted, record footage showing her boyfriend is a cheating douchebag. So that YOU will be holding ALL the aces when you show your hand.

Exactly how thrilled is she going to be. When she knows you did all this to impress and win her, ON TOP OF WAITING DAYS TO TELL HER ABOUT HER BOYFRIEND FUCKING A STRANGER AND LETTING HER FUCK HIM AFTER.

What lady isn’t going to be just creaming in her panties and slip and slide her way across the room over to you and into your arms, knowing you held off on this intel and let her ride a dick that was inside another woman.

Because I’m tellin you. No woman will be happy about this.

But I digress.

Why go on about saving friendships and ending bad relationships. When we have a child who shows up mysteriously and tells you they will show you the way to the temple that everyone is telling you to not visit, and to stay the fuck away from. A temple which even the creepy kid tells you “We must be back before dark. It is very important we not be out after dark.”

All of this. Sounds like just the best time. The super best time.

Do these morons actually go to the temple? Well yeah, we wouldn’t have our movie if they didn’t.

The traverse the forest and behold, a temple is found. Brought there by their little friend, who either is, or isn’t a ghost.

Is it worth it?

Not especially.

I mean even as far as shrines go. It’s just. Well an empty place. With half taken apart statues. And not much else. But she came here to take pictures so take pictures they shall. I’m not shitting on their shrine. But I am just saying. The people who told them there are better, more interesting shrines. You know. EVERYONE WHO WARNED THEM? They were right. There are far better looking shrines.

But that is neither here, nor there.

Because it is getting dark. And ghost boy is leaving the group. Because as he said. They need to be back before it gets dark.

What happens is pretty much expected.

Spooky being start appearing in the shadows. Monk ghost pop up here and there, ghost children start appearing.

Oh and Christopher is pulled through the flooring to the ground, damaging or breaking his leg. Its never made really clear.

Yes, Christopher was pulled. Pulled through the floorboards of the temple.

James and Katey come running to help Christopher. Thankfully he seems alright. I mean aside the fact he is on the ground of an ancient temple. Beside the skeletons of little children, like the ones missing.

AND THE FACT

HE TELLS JAMES AND KATEY

HE WAS PULLED DOWN!!

James hears this, and the look he gives. It’s the same look Christopher gave, and I am not kidding you when I say this look is best described as someone having a confused moment. Like the meme of a loading spinning wheel and dialup tone as someone stares blankly, waiting for someone to insert dialogue.

If this were a better movie, and it were that deep? I would say it’s the work of a kitsune demon blinding them to the reality, the fear. Knowing inside this is not right, that they should run. But instead being calmed and told to ignore it.

Again, if this were a better movie? I could see that being the cause.

This is just the acting not essentially selling it.

So with Christopher no longer able to walk so much as hobble. The group decides it is best to stay at the temple for the night, and in the morning go get help.

Well alright then. Good idea. Stay out past dark at the cursed shrine you were told not to go near. Especially after dark.

With Christopher now out of commission, I can lower my believe to a reasonable 78% that he intends to kill Katey and James. But this is the moment we have built up all our bullshit for. Its night time, there is a camp fire, and James is somewhere he doesn’t want to be, with a lady he tells he loves, and a simp who he knows recorded them fucking. Only good things will come from this.

Is there a fight? Yes

Is it the fight we expect? No

All of the build up. All of the secret boner love that Christopher felt for his besty, all the animosity between James the giant jelly belly and Christopher the Super Simp. All of it was pointless.

Because what we get instead is far stupider.

James excuses himself to take a piss, or look for a Japanese lady he can bang as it seems on his to-do list still. But instead of leaving he hides behind some trees. To spy on the other two. Do they give up any juicy details? No.

Christopher tells Katey he really likes James, and he’s not the kind of guy he expected. Katey questions this answer but neverminds it, and decides to bring up with Christopher the big secret bombshell. She hasn’t told James, that she was pregnant, and it seems either had an abortion? Or lost it. Whichever. But “I plan to tell him, I will tell him once we get back home.”

That’s when James shines a flashlight in her face and makes his return with “Did somebody say Yoga?”

No he didn’t, he just asked “Tell him what.”

So the two take off, She tells James. And the man does the right thing for a change. I seriously mean this too. His reaction is the first legitimate bit of acting from him in this film.

He is upset at this news. He is hurt. He grabs his stuff and leaves Katey crying. He walks over to the fire toward Christopher and tells him “You have a majority of my food and water. I am going back to the village, and I swear I will send help in the morning.” And off he goes into the forest. Katey crying watching her man leave, she tells Christopher “I told him” and now the party of three is a party of two.

Why build up all this love triangle bullshit, the cheating, the sex recording. All of that. If you were just gonna toss it out the window and randomly ai generate a “I had an abortion”. I mean sure it’s a plot twist, I guess? But it just seems so out of left field especially with only. Good lord 20 minutes left!

I mean hey, good for them I guess trying to do something different but still the same?

So James goes off into the forest and the movie kicks into comedy mode.

We know James is going to die. We know this now. We always have.  Three people enter, only one comes back.

James wonders off into the dark forest, comes across a Kitsune statue, tells her to go fuck herself and walks off. Only to find himself walking in circles, and the statue now missing. Finding instead of the statue, a standing…creature with several fox heads.

The effects on this thing, are.

Adorable.

This is where the film shows its budget, and bless their hearts. It is the cutest terror of the forest, complete with its wiggly rubber mouths.

Meanwhile back at death shrine. Katey and Christopher are huddled up inside the dead kid shrine. She has decided. God I love that I get to share this. She has decided to begin getting over losing her boyfriend as she gave up their child. And gives Christopher a look of I need comfort, and more than a friend. But hold on there simp boy. She wants to spoon. So she cuddles her back into him and begins to drift off, as Christopher his hyper ventilating at the fact his dreams are coming true.

That is until we hear James cry out in terror as the Kitsune fucks with his face.

I laughed to the point I nearly choked on my drink.

We hear him scream out. Katey sits up from the cuddle puddle, and announces “He needs me” and takes off into the dark.

Never. Have I ever. Heard a line like this, and felt so lucky having heard it.  It was the funniest damn shit. You tell this guy you deleted his baby from your hard drive, he storms off. You decide to seek comfort with a man you know has crushed on you forever, and when you hear a scream in the woods your reaction is “He needs me”

Fucking gold.

So Katey doesn’t just take off leaving Christopher alone in a shrine. Oh no.

This bitch is going down a fucking mine into the mountain. For her man.

The man she aborted her future with, loves, and also cheated on her. It’s just. Poetry.

As for Christopher? Well not much the man can do with a lame leg. Except get visited by several dead kids. Who turn to face him, missing eyes and having puckered fish mouths with rows of sharp teeth.

So they proceed to gnaw his face and flesh off.

Meanwhile dear sweet Katey. Finds her bae! He’s in the mine she randomly ran into without a second thought. She runs right up to him and. His eyes are missing and mouth bloody. So she turns right the fuck around and runs.

Only to find herself trapped in the mountain. Like those kids were.

So what becomes of her? Don’t know.

The movie decides THAT is where it wants to stop. Because it has. A PLOT. TWIST.

One you could never ever ever, not ever see coming. Not even if I screamed it at you. Not even if you used your brain and watched the movie. And I am talking like a passive amount of your brain. Like the concentration amount to push a fart out.

The investigator questioning Christopher ask him what happened to her. Instead of answering. He ask them, why is the boy from that village sitting outside in the hallway?

The investigators . Shockingly. Look at each other confused. And tell him.

Ready for the shock.

“There is no boy outside, There is no boy from a village.”

And BAM! Minds blown!

Shocking I know. SO shocking the movie has to do a reverse of events and show you every encounter they had with the boy, and how there WAS no boy.

But its not done with us yet. Oh no ho ho ho. Not yet.

The investigators show him a picture. Of someones feet. Because a certain actor was done with the film and no longer available. They ask him “We know you killed James, but why did you?”

What is this? INCEPTION?! The shocks are just coming in left and right! Like the time you accidentally touch your butthole while getting off and you have ‘that’ moment. Color me surprised!

So yes. We get to see a half assed second take of James last moments and Christophers hand picking up a rock and smashing his face in.

Christopher is losing his collective shit over these incredible realizations. And…..he suddenly loses his cool and attacks the interpreter, and runs out of the room. Where does he go? Does security shoot him? Does he return to the village? Don’t know.

The movie simply ends with a moment of shock at Christopher going crazy, and we see a shot of Katey in the mine, huddled on the floor, and growling.

The End

This movie just. Wow. Day 2 and we found a film that pulled an Amber Heard and literally shit the bed. I mean it wasn’t exactly doing amazingly. But it was looking like it was going somewhere promising. But then it just seems like. The filmmakers realized they had to rap things up. Forgot things they set up earlier, and just rushed through it.

Which I don’t understand.

Seriously this makes no sense. Like. Okay the movie was low budget. Absolutely. It looks like the majority of the budget went toward the Kitsune demon. Which looked far better sparingly used. But like. Goddamn why.

You had something here. You were going in the right direction. But you just. Dropped the ball and rushed it. Why?

You set up a love triangle. All the ingredients for a jealousy fight, but don’t. Why?

You setup a night of terror and spooky shit, only to rush through it and show none of it. Why?

So much setup for. Just dropping all of it at the end. Like it was clearly headed toward something big. But then they pulled out. Maybe they ran out of funds, maybe they had issues. I mean I’m not even picking at the film and filmmakers. I am actually wondering if that’s the case. Especially given we never see James corpse shown by the investigators. It’s seriously just some random guys feet and bottom of his jeans laying on the forest ground.

If they really did run out of funds then. Damn that is a shame. I can understand the film ending so quickly. But at the same time, even then? This was just. Yeah.

It’s not a horrible piece of shit. It had promise. But it also had a lot of the dumb. There wasn’t anything clever outside the concept of a kitsune horror. Past that. It was pretty by the numbers. Until they cut it off and suddenly it shifted and ended.

That was 79 minutes of ‘Well, okay’

I know horror film logic is always silly. But it’s rarely. Rarely that stupid.

As much as people like to joke about Friday the 13th and the whole “Hey lets go spend the summer at the camp where everyone died”

If you look at it like that? Yeah its stupid. It’s easy to poke fun at and roll your eyes.

When you look at it played out in the films?

“After what happened, they changed the name of the place, and built this camp far away from that one” “That was years ago. The towns trying to move past it” “This camp was closed down so, we decided to buy it and restore it so we could reopen and offer a summer camp experience for kids, yeah there’s strange stories around town but you can’t always believe that stuff”

They give reason. There’s an actual explanation and thought given to it. But looking at it from the outside in, or with a cynical eye. Yeah you can tare it down to basics. This was like that.

This film was made with the premise of. This is going to happen, because it needs to happen, and we need to spell it out for them how bad this is, but they still need to do it.

Which doesn’t really work. Because you end up with what I pointed out earlier. Characters having moments where they’re waiting for dialog to load in their brain. They are waiting for the reason in their mind to die, and to try and convincingly say what was written.

A man shows you. A kid tore out their own eye balls, and held them walking back to town. A man CORRECTS YOU, to make sure you understand this. But your reaction is to stare and then snap back once the script loads up and say “I don’t know what he said, lets go to the shrine.”

Normally when people are told “Don’t go there, there’s a curse” “Don’t go, it will make you sick” “You will die”, the characters have a moment of questioning this, laughing it off, discussing should we or shouldn’t we. And then they go through with it. They acknowledge the danger. They don’t suffer a windows error and reboot.

Why this is surprising to me, is because of the people involved.

The actors in this? This is not their first rodeo. Brandon Sklenar, he played James. The guy looked familiar and sure enough, I see him in the Yellowstone show 1923. Guy was also in Westworld, he played Burt Reynolds in The offer(about the making of The Godfather). Dude has some serious chops. It explains why James turn at the end leaving and being human for once to Christopher actually was the first believable thing he delivered. Everything else up to that point was just…lacking. Somehow.

And the writers? Simon Barrett, if you are a fan of Red Letter Media, he appeared on the episode where they watch The Pit. The man wrote the 2016 Blair Witch, a couple of shorts for the V/H/S series, AND one of my favorite anthologies The ABC’s of Death.

Fucking Neal Edelstein, the dude who produced Mulholland Drive, Both Ring films AND the reboot in 2017. And directed Dark Hearts, a movie I really didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did.

And Shin’ya Egawa. Guy produced the best grudge sequel that still freaks me the fuck out, and One Missed Call, another great horror movie.

What of the director? He explains a lot of the movie. Why the scary shots worked, and moody shots looked great. The guy is a cinematographer. A BIG cinematographer. So yeah, his shots were well composed and put together. The film looked great. No question what so ever about that. Just everything else seemed. Off. Somehow.

It’s kind of sad because again, you can see what they were going for. What the planned. What they were going to do. But yeah it just. Stopped dead in its tracks. I say this because I refuse to believe this film was made to end the way it did, given the talent of those involved but. Well. We did watch Shark Exorcist and when we thought they had to cut sequences out for budget, we learned it was shot as it was written so. Stranger things have happened.

In the end. The film had a promising premise. It was well setup. The characters needed more work and background. If this received studio attention it would’ve been handled differently it feels. Instead it’s a decent effort, that got cut short right when it was getting us to the point we all were waiting for. Which is sad.

At the same time. I still love that last time we did a month of reviews, we kept waiting and waiting and it wasn’t until the final 10 that we found a film that made us question sanity. This time it only took a day. It wasn’t soul crushing. It just could’ve been good.

For what it is though. Its not the worst way to spend 79 minutes of your life. It had some good laughs. I mean I really did laugh during the forest attack and I love this movie for giving me that and the “he needs me” line. Just, love it.

And the Kitsune beast? Still so adorable. Expensive as hell likely. But so adorable.

Check it out? If you can get someone to rent it for you, by all means check it out. I’d love to see a complete work from the same team in this. But we shall see. For now? If every single person in Japan tells you not to visit a village, a shrine, a place of untold evil and curses and death to all whom enter? Maybe consider going to Mario World park? Goodnight!