Akuryô byôtô

When I was a child, I thought I was going to have a heart attack watching this movie called Ju-on. It as basically the first j-horror movie I have ever watched. Ju-on was on a whole other level of scary. I do not watch horror dramas often, I prefer other drama. However, I had to check out Akuryo Byoutou for myself. Akuryo Byoutou is basically about cute nurses working night shift in a hospital where they have to walk around the dark corridors at night with only a small flashlight and there is an old abandoned ward with no electricity. Akuryo Byoutou is filled with staples of the j- horror genre ranging from woman in white to dead schoolgirls to silent ghosts that just stand there. It's my favorite thing about the j-horror genre, the camera pans around you see a short glimpse of a head at the window thinking 'wtf was that' and it pans back and its not there. Less is scarier. I also liked how the early episodes are told as flashback. Something happens to a character at the end of an episode and the next one we find out what actually happened and how they are connected to Kaho's character, Runa. Unfortunately after the halfway mark, Akuryo Byoutou stops being scary when things start getting explained and the show is forced to show more. Ghosts/monsters are scary when you don't see the whole thing and only see a glimpse. Imagination is scarier than the real thing. Second half is more of a Blair Witch and zombie movie and the finale is something else entirely. I had fun watching, but I will never return to this drama. Horror drama should be scary. This drama is more funny than scary.

There are ten episodes in this Japanese TV series. Each episode is only 22 minutes. If you cut the intro and flashbacks, then an episode will only have 15 minutes of original content. However, they have edited it so well that it is entertaining nevertheless. For example, one episode will have a short scene involving a ghost. It might seem randomly and insignificant in that episode but in the next they will provide the backstory.

The story is about a nurse who joins for work at a hospital. She and other nurses begin to encounter some ghosts. Even patients also face similar experiences. A few patients seem uncomfortable with the new nurse. Her ghostly face also appears in a photo and later in a video leading to her becoming suspect in the eyes of colleagues and patients.

If not for the unnecessarily awkward posture given to the nurse, I would have given a 10/10 rating.