King's Game

Based on the best selling novel by Nobuaki Kanazawa (a.k.a. Pakkuncho), King's Game is a cell phone themed horror movie like "Chakushin Ari" and "Keitai Kareshi" which the Japanese seems to have exclusive market in the industry.

One day a message arrives to cell phones of all the classmate of Chiemi (Yurina Kumai). It contain a seemingly innocuous order for one of her classmate to "confess" his love to another classmate of his. When he obeys, message arrives saying "obedience confirmed". The order from this unknown "King" keeps escalating, and if the order is not obeyed, the person who disobeyed experiences dire consequences, and also has memory of them erased from all the people outside Chiemi's class. Who is this "King" that seem to have magical power to wield the power of life and existence over Chiemi's class ?

The story is a mixture of horror and mystery like the two other movies mentioned above. In the novel the main character's name is also Nobuaki Kanazawa (Performed in this movie by Doori Sakurada), but he is relegated to a supporting role in this movie.

Acting is rather thin in this movie. It was made by a TV station (Tokyo Broadcasting System) , and seem that it is not a full on movie production. Many of the casts are from teen idol group ℃-ute, and Berryz. So the target audience is teenagers who've downloaded the novel on to their cell phones. Why a simple story like this gets over 30 million downloads is more mysterious than who the "King" is. Maybe the real "King" is fiddling the market.

I watched the movie to find out what king's game is all about, but the movie is not too scary, or intriguing. Perhaps it's obligatory to make a movie out of popular novels in Japan. So this movie is only recommended for a die-hard Asian horror or movie fans.

4/10