In Japan nothing appears to be safe from hexes! And you have a good chance of crossing paths with one. This time around it's a haunted, doom 'n' gloom mini-mart store giving out bad vibes, the deadpan owners seem to be out of their minds and whenever 999 or 666 cha-chings on the cash register your ticket is up. And not just the idea of handing over your cash, but your life too.
Quite loopy when it wants to be, as there's a nightmare logic to the storytelling - things just happen, mainly bad things. It might at times use the same-old ghost tropes (eg whispering voices, bumps in the dark and possessions), but the set-pieces are overblown and amusingly staged for few WTF moments - like the faceless stranger in the Eskimo hooded jacket to the hallucinogenic eyeball popping out of somebody's head and blood shot eyes appearing in the darkest spots in the store. Some deaths are more effective than others, yet each one brought something different. My fave being a lady getting stalked by a man with a bandaged head dragging a sledgehammer behind him. The scene can be intense.
For its minor budget and digital look the director manages to craft stylistic flashes (albeit using slow-mo and encroaching camerawork) together with ratcheted suspense and weirdness. However what made it much more surreal is that the exposition drop explaining the background of the store comes from nowhere. Everybody goes about their daily routines, in spite of the unnatural occurrences surrounding the store like crows circling above. All we get are bemused looks from those who aren't yet affected, compared to the ones who seemed to be caught in a trance. So when a crazy old lady pushing a pram with a toy doll (who we see only for a brief second early in the film) decides drops by to warn the mystified staff of the store's evil origins - you know what they do next? The smartest thing; intelligibly walk away from their jobs. No conviction to investigate, or making peace with the unrest spirits. It's now somebody else's problem. So in a way the resolution doesn't provide any sort of payoff. This might explain why the plot comes around full circle and I couldn't understand why it would, other then to amplify one final shock. In doing so it just added to the convoluted structure set-up at the beginning. Tight, moody hyperphysical low-rent J-horror with no real method to its madness.
Quite loopy when it wants to be, as there's a nightmare logic to the storytelling - things just happen, mainly bad things. It might at times use the same-old ghost tropes (eg whispering voices, bumps in the dark and possessions), but the set-pieces are overblown and amusingly staged for few WTF moments - like the faceless stranger in the Eskimo hooded jacket to the hallucinogenic eyeball popping out of somebody's head and blood shot eyes appearing in the darkest spots in the store. Some deaths are more effective than others, yet each one brought something different. My fave being a lady getting stalked by a man with a bandaged head dragging a sledgehammer behind him. The scene can be intense.
For its minor budget and digital look the director manages to craft stylistic flashes (albeit using slow-mo and encroaching camerawork) together with ratcheted suspense and weirdness. However what made it much more surreal is that the exposition drop explaining the background of the store comes from nowhere. Everybody goes about their daily routines, in spite of the unnatural occurrences surrounding the store like crows circling above. All we get are bemused looks from those who aren't yet affected, compared to the ones who seemed to be caught in a trance. So when a crazy old lady pushing a pram with a toy doll (who we see only for a brief second early in the film) decides drops by to warn the mystified staff of the store's evil origins - you know what they do next? The smartest thing; intelligibly walk away from their jobs. No conviction to investigate, or making peace with the unrest spirits. It's now somebody else's problem. So in a way the resolution doesn't provide any sort of payoff. This might explain why the plot comes around full circle and I couldn't understand why it would, other then to amplify one final shock. In doing so it just added to the convoluted structure set-up at the beginning. Tight, moody hyperphysical low-rent J-horror with no real method to its madness.