Joyû-rei

A worth-while watch for an introduction to the origins of modern J-Horror. As a Freshman directorial effort some aspects show through as "need improvement,"; continuity of story, backstory development, score, lighting - however, the concept of this film became the backbone of J-Horror and the foreshadowing of many of what we now call cliches in Asian Horror. That being said, by today's standards not a "scary" film nor one that will be memorable for younger audiences.

This Japanese horror film, originally called 'Joyû-rei' and was one of the first films directed by Hideo Nakata of 'Ringu' or 'The Ring' fame, has its fair share of truly creepy and unsettling moments. However, the ending was way too rushed and unfulfilling for this film to merit a higher ranking, in my opinion.

Having said that, I still believe that this spooky Japanese film ought to have more recognition not only for historical reasons because of the similarities to 'Ringu' and as the director Hideo Nakata's first real film but also because it gets some things better than modern horror films.

Not on the same level as Ring (or Ring 2) but still a good Japanese horror flick nonetheless. I wish North American horror producers would take a page out of the Japanese horror template and put more 'spookiness' and less cheap shocks in their flicks. Lots of good examples in this one, scenes where a whited out face is scene staring behind a young actress, photographs on a wall are suddenly glimpsed smiling, just for a second, and more. Worth checking out if you like the genre.

First a bit about the story. A young director working in the japanese studio system is making a WWII period film requiring strong emotional scenes from two young actresses. There is quite a bit of plot revolving around the casting of the actresses, as well as illumination of their very different personalities and maturation. The director has to fight against agents and studio brass to cast the actors he wants to cast, and this preoccupies much of the early portion of the film.

While screening dailies, the production crew stumbles upon a strange accident. Some of the negative they were using appears to have been previously exposed, and has portions of a much older Japanese film featuring a rather transfixing actress from the past. The young Director is particularly intrigued, as the film seems to trigger a childhood recollection of watching the film years earlier on TV. He assigns the Studio editor to dig up information on this film, to put his mind at ease, and the film production proceeds from there, although clearly now haunted by questions about this other film, and its mysterious star.

If you are a fan of Ringu, now remade in the US as The Ring, you will no doubt find it interesting how many of the same ideas and motifs are present in Ghost Actress. In many ways, in retrospect, Ghost Actress appears to be a working out of stylistic and narrative techniques which made Ringu such a huge success.

The problems with Ghost Actress can primarily be traced back to the muddy script, which poses many questions without answering any. As I mentioned, much of the early film proves in the end to be entirely irrelevant to the central plot, and there isn't a strong linear thread driving the protagonist of the film, namely the young Director. He simply seems to be reacting to the situational dilemmas confronting him, and despite the nerdy likableness of Actor Yuurei Yanagi, doesn't illicit a lot of concern for his predicament or obsessions.

The conclusion of the film however, is undeniably powerful, and hints at Director Hideo Nakata's talent for combining supernatural themes with striking visual and sound design to great unnerving effect.

Second feature film from the man who would go on to make The Ring and Dark Water, indeed his very first film if you exclude, as I see IMDb do, a 'pink'. but first or second it is a great effort and if it doesn't totally succeed it certainly has some very creepy moments and is breaking new ground for a ghost film. He is already using the media, ghostly images appear superimposed upon the film he is using to shoot a melodrama, and utilising the long haired maniacal girl/ghost image. Modest running time exactly in accordance with the requirements of the story; if only all directors would go short if the story did not warrant more. A little confusing now and again because Mr Nakata does not lay everything out that obviously but well worth catching.