Let’s see, a “Ghost Virus” is passed around Japan through the internet and it kills people. There’s a woman with long black hair who walks funny and kills people. At first glance it seems like all it’s missing is a plucky reporter with a kid. For a while there I thought Sadako was going to have an official cameo appearance.
Which isn’t to say it’s a rip-off of Ringu. It’s actually not. They’re cut from similar cloth, but this is its own animal. Where Ringu tried hard to be truly chilling (and succeeded), this film goes less for shivers and more for pure psychological dread. Don’t get me wrong, there are frightening moments*, they’re just not the total focus. It’s a bleak film, offering an both personal visions of loneliness and a wide apocalyptic view of a world devastated by catastrophe and it’s that pessimistic POV that most stuck with me. “There’s no hope”, is a message repeated implicitly and through action. In that way it kind of feels like a continuation of the Ring novel, which had a similar pessimism and an inevitability about it. I’d hesitate to say I really enjoyed it, but I certainly think it’s a well executed, thought provoking film from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
This is my second film from Kurosawa (no relation to the Emperor, Akira.) While both were good, this is far superior to the first film, Cure. I have a few more in my queue. We’ll see how those stack up.
*including one deliciously creepy moment towards the end of the film that would have turned the TV off in our house for the foreseeable future if my girlfriend had watched this one with me.
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