Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

WiseRatFlames An unexpected masterpiece

Wyatt There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

genusangelicus Quite by good luck I saw this film as a reviewer tester.Never been a reviewer before or an avid horror fan.Anyhow, as a fan of suspense films I enjoyed this one, savoring the predicaments, and its exceptional climax.It's set and filmed on location in a really weird forest in Japan: not only is the forest weird - looks like tangled trees above tangled undergrowth, all springing from awfully jumbled earth, but also its reputation in Japanese myth or legend.The basic idea is very well spun out by the author and the actors' performances reflect knowledgeable , dedicated direction.Would not recommend this for children under 15. There is some nudity but there is also exceptionally graphic violence. Even later teen years, I'd suggest chaperoning.

tridentbear I got to watch an advanced screening of this movie, and I was anxious (just because the last movie I watched was that recent remake of "Nightmare on Elm Street" which seriously was lame.) I won't get into the actual details of the plot, but it was more than just a "hey here's a random thing going around killing people with no good reason" type of plot, which always bug the CRAP out of me. The characters had motives, and there was this extreme tension throughout the movie (I won't say why, but it was very intense!) Overall it was like my favorite types of horror movies, which focus on the psychological/tension type of horror, rather than the let's-see-how-much-blood-this-dead-body-can-spew type. It's the kind that you think about days after. And even more freaky that the forest is a real place! Freaky deaky! Anyway, I plan on seeing it again.

aquagorgeous-687-15397 I saw this film at an advanced screening so I'm not sure what will blossom out of the current version. I heard some pretty wild comments from the audience. My feeling is that quite a few people didn't get all there was to get, which is probably just as well.This is a spooky story, and set in the real life legend of Awoky Gara Forest (OMG I cannot EVEN spell that word) and that's extremely tantalizing, to see something real, a true phenomenon get played out on screen... but there's actually something really weird underneath all the chaos.The main guy, Jayson is photographer. The validation that all the women around him seek seems to be the movie's central theme. It's sort of all disguised as a horror film, but the real horror is what happens to any human being when he or she gets infatuated with a lost love. That's what happens to the main girl, the blonde ghost.I'm pretty sure this film is about the dense forest of the human soul--that if you lose yourself in the infatuation of another or the vanity of narcissism, your loss is permanent, and you become this demon like vulture, who tries to drag everyone else down, because now your codependent sense of self worth is eroded in your nagging need to be validated by a guy.Buuuuuuuut, in this case it's not just any guy, it's a photographer, Jason. So he's not just a man, he's a lens. He's the great validator because he captures women's superficial beauty and immortalizes it. To the point where even the gorgeous naked girl in front of him, the first scene, hardly captures his attention at all, while instead he is engrossed in her 2 dimensional replication on the photographs. Every girl wants to be immortally beautiful. It's the vampire complex. (Not that this film has vampires in it, alas!) Jason provides it. But he's fickle. The woman seek him but he ends up turning them all down. That's the fleeting nature of the outward deification. The tighter you grab it, the more warped and contorted it will be as it oozes from your fist.He pretty much says it all in the photo shoot, yelling at the dainty Japanese model, then seducing her proper poses. "He's over you but you like it. You love it. It's a good hurt" (paraphrased). And that's what finally primes the girl. The hurt. An endless pursuit of the hurt.So I LOVED the ending. Made perfect sense. When the lens is cracked, and you'll get my reference when you see the film, the pain is over.The meta-lingual references are pretty much tripled when you consider that Jason uses the video camera in the end to search for his nemesis and Koshi (sp?) uses the hallways monitors. In a sense, there is no reality for these people beyond what the camera allows them to see, a confined perspective. That's the pathology of it.Solid performances for the most part bring a deceptively common dialog to life throughout the story. It's suspenseful and then it gets pretty scary. But, again, for me, the true worth is in the brutal excoriation of the human condition. Slash up on THAT!!!!: )

mazeltough This is one of the better ghost stories I've seen in a while! And the ending is creepsville. Not to give away too much but the final scenes totally will have you on edge!! You could say this is sort of like a Japanese Horror flick but, having seen "The Audition" and "Ringu," I'd say that this film isn't exactly of the same odd J-horror ilk. This is more like "The Ring" or "The Grudge." It's a more thoughtful movie, almost like a police story at first and then becomes a nightmare in the end. There is one shot that is insanely creepy. Actually a lot.The shots of the Fuji forest are probably the real deal. Which helps. I got a little confused in the middle but the ending pretty much sums up the loose ends. It's not quite as well done as The Ring but it's in the same vane. Michael Madsen is good. And the hacker is great! If you want a good scare, this film will do it.