I will be honest. I don’t know what the hell was going on in this movie. It’s like the Pulp Fiction of horror movies, but I just couldn’t keep the non-linear story straight. Maybe I need to watch the American remake with Buffy, so that it’s dumbed down for my stupid American brain.

Rika is the main character who is sent to take care of an elderly woman, who is basically comatose, and finds a child in an upstairs closet. Thus starts Rika being cursed by the family that was murdered in the house many years before. Then it jumps around a lot to other characters being haunted by ghosts in various locations.

Aside from the confusing narrative structure, there is a reason this is a well-known and popular franchise. There are some genuinely freaky moments, which make great use of sound and visuals. Not all the effects are good, but some are quite effective at what was trying to be achieved.

I think it could have been really scary if it hadn’t jumped around so much. It seemed like that stifled the building of suspense so when the tense scenes arrived, my skin didn’t really crawl like it needed to.

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