Gurozuka

The ceaselessly querulous members of an all-female amateur filmmaking collective's field trip to an isolated, singularly shuddersome holiday lodge in the mountains becomes a blood-spattered ordeal! Their plan to shoot an improvised folk horror short inspired by the gruesome events that previously took place at the same locale proves disastrous! While slavishly adhering to vintage slasher tropes, the frequently eerie 'Gurozuka' provides a number of satisfyingly sinister interludes! One truly EPIC jumpscare is sure to jolt the most complacent shock seeker out of their Blumhouse torpor!

'Gurozuka' remains bafflingly underappreciated, as maestro,Yôichi Nishiyama's unfairly maligned,superbly atmospheric, spookily forest-set slasher shows its terrorized victims absolutely Noh mercy! While I personally would have appreciated less squabbling, and more blood-letting, 'Gurozuka' has a memorably macabre killer, and the deliciously skewed concept of a evilly haunted Super-8 film is compellingly creepy! I enjoyed 'Gurozuka', the desolate location is unsettling, Ryuji's Murayama's score is deliciously jarring, and the hysteria-laden climax provides J-horror freaks with a frantically fear-stuffed finale!

In Japan, a school's movie club was shut down when one member disappeared and another was hospitalized after suffering a nervous breakdown. Seven years later, two students, Maki and Ai, restart the club with the intention of making a horror film based on the events that led to the organization's closure. Three other girls (Natsuki, Yayoi, and Yuka) join the club, and they, Maki and Ai are taken to a secluded lodge called the Yuai House by Maki's sister Yoko, a teacher and former club member, who has brought along the awkward Takako.

Well haven't we heard of the plot already? More or less? All the Japanese girls are cuties. The scenery is neat to look at. But the movie is slow as molasses and hence, not engaging. It plods on and on with no real purpose. There is nothing truly scary. BORE Ring!