Gakkou no kaidan: Noroi no kotodama

The premise of "Kotodama" seems interesting enough; mysterious things begin to happen to a group of friends, and these paranormal events seem to be linked to the class of 1988.

In truth, Kotodama tries to intertwine different storylines into one setting, but it lacks any continuity or substance beyond the premise. From beginning to end, the storyline seems to be in "auto pilot" mode and doesn't go anywhere, even the resolution is lacklustre and poorly done.

The film is devoid of effective scares or atmosphere. However, props to the director for filming a horror film during daytime, in all of its entirety.

Skip it, there's many Japanese Horror films worth a view, Kotodama isn't one of them.

I dont get it how this movie got 5+ rating. And the lack of power in dialogue makes the movie too much boring to watch. Acting was also soo bad.

Just dont watch this movie you will regret it after watching this just like me :')

As I sat down to watch the 2014 Japanese horror movie titled "Haunted School: The Curse of the Word Spirit" (aka "Gakkou no kaidan: Noroi no kotodama"), I must admit that I was expecting a bit more of a horror movie than what this turned out to be.

Now, school is boring, granted, but did writer and director Masayuki Ochiai really have to transfer the boredom of school and attending classes to the movie? This movie was so unfathomably slow paced that it was hard to stay awake during the ordeal that passed as a horror movie. And little did it help that the storyline was just utter garbage. It is without a doubt one of the most unappealing and boring of Japanese horror stories I have had the misfortune of sitting through.

In fact, this movie was so boring that I just gave up on it with about 30 minutes left of the movie. But since absolutely nothing interesting or scary had happened up to that point, I just had my share of wasting my time, and called it quits on "Haunted School: The Curse of the Word Spirit".

And I can honestly say that I have zero intention of returning to watch the rest of the movie, because I didn't care one bit about the storyline, much less have an interest in the rigid and wooden characters that milled about with no purpose in the movie.

If you enjoy Japanese horror movies, you should do yourself a favor and wide "Haunted School: The Curse of the Word Spirit" a wide berth. This is seriously a waste of time to sit down to watch. And for a horror movie, then "Haunted School: The Curse of the Word Spirit" was just awfully devoid of anything even remotely scary, disturbing or creepy.

My rating of "Haunted School: The Curse of the Word Spirit" lands on a generous three out of ten stars, solely based on the production value of the movie, and the fact that the actors and actresses put on adequate enough performances, given the fact that they had literally nothing to work with in terms of script and characters.