This movie seems to still get no respect, so let me chip in and say give it a look. The movie has some real atmosphere which really matters in a ghost story. A big part of this is the sound which features constant bug noises whenever at the house and the other aspect of the effective sound is a very good score by Ken Thorne. It's a scary score, I'd say Thorne's best and the sound design of the film uses it well and also uses Japanese language screams and grunts effectively. The scares are here and if a few times the scare is followed by something that gets a bit silly, you have to say it gets you.
The film is also part travelogue of Japan and it does this well too. The ghosts are fairly authentic to Japanese culture--including the face in the soup ghost that others have thought silly. What's interesting about the ghosts in this film, that is pretty unique, is that we the audience see the ghosts but for the most part the characters in the film don't. I can't think of another ghost story that has done this. The movie moves pretty quickly though in the middle it loses a bit of steam and it's also in the middle that the ghosts get a bit silly, but most of this can be forgiven with the uncompromising and memorable ending toping it all off. Also there is nudity and sexual elements and the female Japanese ghost is genuinely creepy as is the dialog free opening of the film.
Must be said that the existing DVD of the film has a soft looking 16 by 9 image, if you watch the full frame version the image is sharper and you see more image top and bottom, so the widescreen is just a slightly sloppy blow up of the same video master. The trailer to the film also 16 by 9 looks much better than the movie! But it's still worth watching.
Director Connor does one of his best jobs here, it's too bad that in the middle part of the film he has the ghosts run around in scooby Doo fashion, but it's a relatively short lapse in his effective film. George bugs her eyes out one too many times but otherwise gives a good performance as do the 2 male leads. The daughter character is fairly poorly written and acted but that's a smallish part of the film.
It's a unique ghost story it's got exploitation elements to keep you going as well. Hey at least it makes sense, which is more than you can say for THE GRUDGE. Those 2 films pretty much stand alone, well along with THE MANSTER for genre films made by Westerners in Japan.
