Are solo Kokkuri-san movies all rubbish? Not just cheap or mediocre, but terrible. I like her team-up or guest appearances in Hikiko-san vs. Kokkuri-san and Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi, but her other four films so far are dreadful even compared with other straight-to-video J-horror nonsense. This particular failure can be imagined as a talent-free attempt at Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (released four years earlier). Their apocalyptic endings aren't dissimilar.

GOOD THINGS = this film has some nice ideas about showing spooky dead stuff, e.g. hands and faces in the air conditioner and out-of-focus children. I also like the little Evil Dead door in the wall that drags you inside.

Unfortunately, it has nothing else. All that ghost stuff is like Christmas tree decorations without a tree. It's just lying there on the floor, wondering why the filmmakers didn't realise that films need a basic framework. This one doesn't have any characters. It might thinks it does, but it doesn't. The protagonist (Momose Hifumi) is so anonymous that she barely exists. People speak, but that's not the same as having characters. That's about as far as it goes. I suppose there are admittedly two males who talk like thugs and want slapping, but: (a) they're not in it much, and (b) they're annoying and I just wanted them to die and go away.

PLOT SYNOPSIS = people do nothing of interest. Occasionally, they see ghosts and/or die.

All done. Yes, that was a full summary.

The opening's laughable. Four children summon Kokkuri-san. Result: blood and missing fingers. This should have been shocking (they're children). Unfortunately, though, the victim-to-be has that aggressively masculine Japanese speech pattern that at its worst suggests someone's about to get punched. This dick's... what, eight years old? Piss off and get eaten. Also, he's pressurising his not-actually-friends into playing Kokkuri-san against their will, in a J-horror film.

The child actors aren't up to the job. The director's mishandling the scares and the horror-face special effect. Result: lots of eye-rolling from the audience. Almost half an hour passes before the film finally manages a decent horror scene.

The adult cast are also bad. They're okay in mundane scenes, but they have inadequate horror reaction shots.

The film doesn't even know its Kokkuri-san lore. After playing Kokkuri-san, no one tries to burn the paper, use up the pen's ink or spend the coin. Basic research, heroes. Do it or die. There's just nothing in this film. First and foremost, horror movies are still movies. They need plot, characters, motivation, narrative momentum, etc. This one does quite well at making is feel the ever-growing presence of the killer dead, but on a human level it's empty.