What a shame, this could have been a very solid entry in the horror genre.
The story revolves around a woman whose younger sister commits suicide after having left her maternal household to live on her own with her boyfriend and their friends in her newly acquired high rise apartment.
Seemingly unaffected by the whole ordeal and coming across as cold, she decides to delve deeper into this mystery, after having spent the night at her deceased sister's former apartment to clear out her stuff, and supernatural things started happening, such as seeing her dead sister behind the cheap nylon curtains of the now-vacant apartment.
Now, the story in itself is not bad at all. It's actually a quite solid ghost story, but unfortunately this movie had to suffer the consequences of being influenced by western minds, as 4 out of 5 producers happen to be westerners.
You can clearly tell how this movie is influenced by them, as all producers push their will onto the director: the opening credits and end credits reminded me of a typical Goosebumps episode; the type of music used during the scarier scenes being the same music used in western horror movies, and jump scares to name a few of these western influences.
If the Japanese director was left his own devices, making his own personal choices, this movie would have improved greatly. Alas, westerners, learn a lesson from this: do not meddle with Asian horror stories, and let the native people to do the telling.
A little sidenote, there was a ghost during early on in the movie that they unfortunately didn't use as the movie's main antagonist, and served only as the backbone of a made up urban legend regarding the apartment building. The reason why that is unfortunate is because the ghost was actually original and pretty freaky. Final rating: 6.5/10 - rounded up to a 7. Had the potential to be an 8/10.
The story revolves around a woman whose younger sister commits suicide after having left her maternal household to live on her own with her boyfriend and their friends in her newly acquired high rise apartment.
Seemingly unaffected by the whole ordeal and coming across as cold, she decides to delve deeper into this mystery, after having spent the night at her deceased sister's former apartment to clear out her stuff, and supernatural things started happening, such as seeing her dead sister behind the cheap nylon curtains of the now-vacant apartment.
Now, the story in itself is not bad at all. It's actually a quite solid ghost story, but unfortunately this movie had to suffer the consequences of being influenced by western minds, as 4 out of 5 producers happen to be westerners.
You can clearly tell how this movie is influenced by them, as all producers push their will onto the director: the opening credits and end credits reminded me of a typical Goosebumps episode; the type of music used during the scarier scenes being the same music used in western horror movies, and jump scares to name a few of these western influences.
If the Japanese director was left his own devices, making his own personal choices, this movie would have improved greatly. Alas, westerners, learn a lesson from this: do not meddle with Asian horror stories, and let the native people to do the telling.
A little sidenote, there was a ghost during early on in the movie that they unfortunately didn't use as the movie's main antagonist, and served only as the backbone of a made up urban legend regarding the apartment building. The reason why that is unfortunate is because the ghost was actually original and pretty freaky. Final rating: 6.5/10 - rounded up to a 7. Had the potential to be an 8/10.