I wouldn't call it horror, despite deaths and what might be a supernatural curse. Instead, it's primarily about men being dicks, plus a bit of nudity and feverish folklore atmosphere. It certainly doesn't have a character-driven storyline. Stuff happens for 102 minutes. People occasionally die. That's as good as it gets, I'm afraid. This film struck me as basically pointless, although it also manages to be intense. Only one male character (the protagonist, Kano, played by Shin'ya Owada) could be called likeable and he only achieves that halfway through. Owada has charm, e.g. when smiling and showing warmth to a stone-throwing brat. From that point on, I didn't hate him.

I'll give some examples of "men being dicks" (including a small boy).

(a) they go looking for uranium, find it near a mountain village and set up a mining operation. When the local water supply gets contaminated and people die, Kano finds that it's due to some of the mining solvents getting into the water. He's going to tell people, but his boss orders him to cover this up. "You mustn't breathe a word of this to anyone! Not a word!"

(b) without even circumstantial evidence, the villagers decide incorrectly that the water was poisoned by a local family. The villagers had already been throwing stones and human faeces at that family's house, but now they murder its son, daughter and mother.

(c) the protagonists' first actions are: 1. spying on naked women and 2. killing a dog by running it over with a land rover. They'd practically stopped moving and it was barking in front of them. The driver deliberately accelerated and hit it. The men don't care about this, not even on meeting the dog's owner (a small boy).

(d) that boy spoils a wedding by throwing stones, smashing a dish and getting his sister in trouble. Yes, he's upset about the dog, but still.

(e) five bikers bully people and occasionally kill them. Once, they chase down a woman outdoors and it looks as if they'd been considering a gang rape. (She escapes them by jumping off a cliff.)

(f) imagine you're a doctor. If a patient is going scary-crazy and her desperate husband is asking you about her, what should you do? Answer: ignore the man, push him aside and march off.

(g) you're a "spirit rapper", hired to exorcise spirits. You fail, but do you admit this? "The curse seems to have been lifted!" you announce.

(h) if a woman has been possessed by spirits, beat her to death.

(i) your wife might have died because you destroyed a shrine. What do you do? Destroy another one! (Like that boy, our bereaved protagonist is doing something stupid out of grief. In this film, bereavement makes you dumb. Similarly, the last survivor of that murdered family does something weird with a spade, a sword and a dog. This gets him killed too, but not before he's cursed his own village to the last generation.)

(j) fathers are vile. They'll refuse to listen to apologies, express grief by lashing out at their wives, kick out daughters-in-law (who don't survive this) and of course poison villages.

They're a bunch of twats. The female characters are more relatable... but also liable to turn possessed, crazy and evil. There are killings, which at one point become comedic. Abnormal Ugly Person falls from a height while holding a sword. Dad doesn't get out of the way underneath. Whoops.

This film's a mess. Don't ask me what the ending means. I think we're just meant to say "Dog Spirit" and leave it at that. There's supernatural weird stuff, e.g. a man being torn to death by a pack of Alsatians, or the mining machine "accidents". The mountain village is convincingly superstitious and probably inbred. (I was reminded slightly of the rituals and shrine-reverence in Higurashi When They Cry, although this gets nowhere near that level of mountain village horror.) The film has moments that are very 1970s, e.g. haircuts, but it mostly takes place in mountain redneck country that doesn't know fashion, or indeed civilisation.

This one bored me, I'm afraid.