Cursed (Japanese 2004)

Title - Cursed
Language - Japanese
Genre - Horror, J horror, ghost

Ryoko has been sent, instead of her boss to help the transition of a small convenience store that is joining the ranks a of corporate chain store but almost as soon as she arrives she begins to think that something is wrong.  Nao, the daytime casher seems normal enough but when the store managers appear, accusing her of being late for the appointment Ryoko is confused, she’s convinced that she is there in plenty of time, the appointment is for two O'clock but when she checks it’s 4.30.  In the meeting with Mr & mrs Kitura, Ryoko is concerned by their reaction to the new of her boss’ accident, not only do they know that he has lost his legs but they seem very happy about it.

Whilst Ryoko is taking the shops inventory there are a few strange occurrences.  There is the one customer who stands reading the magazines, his face is totally covered by the hood of his parka jacket.  There are strange sounds coming from different rooms and eyes watching them, and crows flying into the windows as well as the owners strange behavior to contend with.

Outside of the store some of their customers are coming to grizzley ends.  

When the man in the Parka attacks Nao and then does something to Komori, the night shift cashier Ryoko and Nao know that they need to find out what is happening in the store, if they can stay sane and alive for long enough.

Cursed starts off as a good ghost film, it’s not too creepy but there is a bit of gore.  As it goes on it does get creepier, the Parka guy is an interesting character but possibly under used and this seems to be a bit of a recurring problem.  There are a number of deaths in the film and all of them are different, i understand that they are supposed to be the manifestation of the curse and they are supposed to be person/environment specific but each death seems to bring an unrelated character or event in just to kill off the person and then they are forgot.  This would have been ok if the murderers were connected or possessed but they are unconnected, swinging from normal people to ghosts & slashers all of whom  have no explanation.  Cursed should have either stuck to one or two killers (they could have used the Parka guy) or gone down the route of having events not people to do the killing in a similar style to the ‘Final Destination’ series.  Instead Cursed give the impression that it is trying fit too much in, it obviously knows what it is but it seems to want to try to please too many people.

Cursed also seems to be a bit  more ‘western’ that other J horrors I've seen.  It is definitely Japanese but there is definitely something different, the ‘slasher’ kill is more of a western style and when the woman in her apartment is about to be haunted is was expecting her to open the fridge and see a dog shouting ‘Zool’ and we do get a second ‘dimension’ to inside of the fridge before getting a ghost reminiscent of the ‘Ring’.

Over all Cursed is a good if somewhat confused film that tries to do too much and falls a little short of what it should be.  It does have gore and quite a good story line so give it watch.

Attack girls swim team vs. the undead

Title -

Attack girls swim team vs. the undead

Language - Japanese

Genre - Zombie, horror

Contains spoilers

I had high hopes for a film with a title like 'Attack girl swim team vs. the undead' but I have to admit I was left a bit disappointed, the problem is I'm not really sure why.  The film starts three days before a cross school swimming competition.  Everything seems to be going ok for one of the competing schools, they've been training hard, the school has been vaccinating students against the new virus that’s going around and there is a new student who they are going to recruit to replace their sick team mate.  Then things take a turn for the worst, the team's coach is found dead and then shows up alive again and the rest of the school start turning into flesh eating zombies until only the girls swim team and the new girl, Aki are that is left.

I think that, if the films plot stopped there it would have been better, they could even have kept the 'mad scientist' cause of the zombie the same but, the inclusion of Aki's back story seemed to add more complication than was necessary, especially as the main point of the back story was just to get more sex on the screen.

Parts of the flashback scenes didn't seem to make to much sense, how could he talk and play the flute at the same time, I think it was supposed to be Aki remembering things slightly wrong and it was the twin who was speaking if so then this seems to be another example of the film trying to be more intelligent than it was.

Girls swim team also seemed to be lacking a bit in the zombie department, putting most of the focus on the two zombie teachers who were quite entertaining but they failed to get across the same sense of threat that could been produce by giving the horde of other zombies that were lurking a bit more screen time.

With the exception of the first scene with the zombies in the in the classroom the other 'normal' zombies seemed a bit pathetic.  I can live with cure for the virus as it fits in with the good part of the plot but for the most part, when we see any normal zombies they are just pushed out of the way and they don’t even swarm, after the first zombie scene we only see about 4 zombies on screen at one time.  With that said I will admit that the little gore that is in the film is quite good.

The swim team is also a bit to pathetic, whilst it is good to  see a film where the survivor's can't automatable pick up any weapon and know how to use it to its full zombie killing capability some zombie killing would have been good.  Part of the problem in this area may have been the lack of zombies I mentioned earlier.  You can't have your side cast killing off your main monsters but, the action could have been improved with more normal zombies.

Now we come to the main villain, there is not too much I can say about this except when he is revealed it’s like something out of a bad Scooby Doo episode and the ‘twist’ with him at the end is just a bit odd.

In saying all of that I would probable give ‘Attack girls swim team vs. the undead’, maybe knowing what to expect may up the enjoyment a bit more.