cecil2

This film terrifically captures the reality of situations, and the trappings and contradictions to the individual of the use of customs. The film is very realistic in a boring way, but that has the ability to capture the viewer. This movie has the most realistic sound I have heard in any movie, it actually sounds like the people are talking in the rooms and the echos heard off the walls. The conflicts and cycles of events are perfectly foreshadowed. The long takes and steady cameras, shooting the rooms more than the people are very effective. Perception of individual and importance of individual and inability to understand individual, even by the same individual are important themes pored over perfectly throughout this great work.

This film is great at putting ideas into the viewer's subconscious. The whole simple idea of the story is great, by having the characters shoot a film such that the viewer almost feels like they are separated from the characters and in tune with the supernatural. Since you are watching people making a movie investigating another movie, it brings you into the action, as if the same things could happen to you. The blandness of some scenes on the surface is really fun when contrasted against the supernatural events that happen later. An example is a line where the director tells the actress not to "look down" when saying her lines, when she really shouldn't be "looking up" later when she encounters the ghost. One of the most interesting things about this movie is that you wouldn't even think this was a ghost story in some scenes until you realize the context it is in. Definitely this is one of the best ghost detective stories, it has an almost meditative nature and makes the movie more scary. The over the shoulder scenes of the ghost are very scary, partly because the movie often shows people filming from the opposite angle, so you are actually watching them film, scenes in which you could become the ghost. By concentrating on the existence of the ghost, the whole movie becomes more scary.