Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

scobbah I am really into Japanese stuff but I have been laying low the past year due to lack of time to indulge in such movies. A group of friends and I rented this one last night without having any expectations on it. The flick started out pretty funky using a lot of colour filters which we discovered were kept throughout the entire movie. I had no problems adjusting to it but some of my friends had problems enjoying the flick due to these filters.As for the plot, I did not find it that bad. Conventional indeed with a few people going to an abandoned house so if you are looking for original cinema, I suppose this one will not save your day. I cannot really comment on the acting. The main actors did not do exceptionally well but not poor either. However the scenery was really nice, the interiors of the house coming to mind.I was a bit unhappy with how the story unfolded. I suppose I expected something more. At any rate it was an OK time-killer and I think it is worth at least 5/10. The flick is not exceptionally good but still a good piece of entertainment a Saturday night.

Julie Hoverson While the story of St. John's Wort is something I could easily imagine coming out of Hammer Films, or a classic Vincent Price movie, it's not BAD, and the visuals more than make up for it.PLOT: Nami inherits a spooky old mansion, takes her ex-boyfriend along so they can scope out using the place as a setting for their video game. Turns out she may have had a twin who died when she was a child. Also turns out her father was a crazy artist, who painted creepy pictures. Is the house haunted? Is the twin still alive? Who is the spooky caretaker? See what I mean by it being very Vincent Price-ish? Anyway, the plot is fairly solid, though I did find at least one of the ending plot twists useless and incomprehensible, but since it really affected nothing else in the film, I ignored it.The VISUALS, on the other hand...The whole movie is oddly colored, which is unsettling to begin with, and which makes sections of it look like they might be CGI, or bluescreened, or might just be badly tinted - all adding to the unreality of the whole thing. Also, the camera "view" keeps shifting, from "reality" to the ex's hand-held camera, to B&W surveillance cameras, and even to a "video game version".My favorite bit of unreality involves the caretaker - when they arrive at the place, the caretaker gives Nami the keys, but the scene is played out as a video game sequence, with the caretaker icon's lines being printed on the screen, rather than spoken - thus making it impossible to determine anything, even gender, about this "person".Overall, I found it very watchable.

siderite This movie is like a video game, Elvira style, if anyone remembers it :) Girl inherits spooky house, goes there, finds out about her family and childhood and "the terrible secret". The fact that the whole thing was done in order to create materials for a video game added an element of obvious to the movie.I liked the actors, they played well for their parts, you might recognize the girl from Ju-On The Grudge, cute as ever. I felt that the starting idea was very promising and if the movie would have drifted in the "asian horror" area, it could have been a very interesting movie about teenager enterprise. This way, the film wasn't serious enough to be called a horror, nor was is funny enough to be called a comedy. And I have come to dislike movies that increase their level of complexity by mirroring themselves (let's do a movie about making a movie about...).In the end it was OK, but nothing special. I would rather play Elvira again.

Richard Brunton The movie doesn't exactly kick off it just flows on to a beginning. Mixing between future images, dreams, computer artwork and the real story, it's all very confusing. However, like many Asian films if you hold on in there things start to become clear, and they do just that. The problem is it takes so long to get out of the "exploration of the house" act, which contains scenes of incredibly drawn out silences, inappropriate dialogue. I even felt myself urging the main character to turn round when her friend told her to look behind her and she just kept looking at him while making confused noises.It was a struggle, but I got through it. However, you shouldn't miss what's been done there technically. The use of hand-held and remote cameras, the clever movement of the camera into the hand-held to provide a new perspective, all new and interesting film techniques pulled together actually make for some interesting viewing. However, they don't save the story. It's almost as if the makers have tried to pull everything together that the current "kids" are into, videogames, matrix style action shot, technology...nah, doesn't work I'm afraid.One problem is it's predictable, until the closing shock which is just railroaded over and doesn't seem to be a surprise that the film makers wanted to pursue. They brought out this great one liner near the end of the movie then just let it go.So poor script, interesting ideas and some cool techniques, but the suspense is lost, as is any horror, surprise and effective story telling. It is mighty shame though, the overall story, once you grasp it, is quite a good and very uneasy one, although it is still left quite unexplained.