Shinrei shashin bu

I wasn't expecting much at all from this. In fact I figured it'd be boring and cheesy.

It was more unique than I thought it would be.

Acting wasn't top tier to say the least, especially during some scenes, but for the most part they did fine.

This certainly is no grand high budget movie, but it does have an interesting premise.

It definitely feels like a typical older Japanese B horror movie, but it was an interesting watch despite the fact that the synopsis didn't seem like it'd be very unique. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the world's most unique, but I certainly wasn't expecting what I got.

At times it felt a little bit all over the place, but it came together at the end.

This film essentially begins with a teenage student by the name of "Kaya Minomiya" (Makoto Okunaka) joining a small club which investigates photos taken of paranormal activity. As it so happens, one such photo is received by the club and, true to their calling, they immediately go to investigate. When they arrive at the home of the sender, they are greeted by a young girl named "Nozome Makabe" (Mio Kudo) who tells them she has been visited by an angel and managed to take the photograph which captured its likeness. While there, the two colleagues of Kaya are rendered unconscious by a mysterious force and it's then that Kaya realizes that the angel in the photo is actually an evil entity which has possessed the young girl. Adding to the horror is the fact that, not long afterward, both Nozome and her mother "Harue Makabe" (Aki Morita) are soon murdered by a serial killer wearing a grotesque mask. But to make matters even worse, because of ghost photo club's investigation, the masked killer now begins to target them as well. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I wasn't too impressed with this horror film due in large part to the lack of any real horror or suspense. To that point, it seemed like the director (Osamu Fukytani) tried to add some mystery to the film by throwing in several new twists along the way but, absent the necessary horror or suspense, it didn't really work out. But that's just my opinion. In any case, as stated earlier, I honestly wasn't impressed with this movie, and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

I had actually never even heard about this 2015 Japanese horror movie titled "Shinrei Shashin Bu" (aka "The Ghost Photo Club") prior to stumbling upon the movie by random chance here in 2023. And with it being a Japanese horror movie, of course I had to watch it, as Japan have made an abundance of great horror movies.

However, "Shinrei Shashin Bu" from writer Osamu Fukutani, was not one such movie. I found the storyline in the movie to by very, very boring and slow paced. And it was a very difficult movie to suffer through, especially since neither storyline or characters had any appeal to me. I ended up giving up on the movie halfway through, but I just simply couldn't stand any more of the utter boredom that was "Shinrei Shashin Bu".

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Shinrei Shashin Bu", but the actors and actresses virtually had nothing overly impressive or wholesome to work with, and that was restricting them from performing outstandingly.

For a horror movie, then "Shinrei Shashin Bu" was frightfully devoid of anything scary, or even anything interest for that matter.

My rating of director Jirô Nagae' 2015 movie "Shinrei Shashin Bu" lands on a generous two out of ten stars. And while I managed to suffer through only half of the movie, I have absolute no interest in returning to attempt to finish watching the rest of the movie; I just simply don't need that kind of boredom in my life.