It wrong-footed me, starting out like the kind of zero-budget J-horror that you'd associate with "drab", "low-key" and "unambitious". Later, though, its story directions took me aback. Mind you, I've seen bad reviews of this from people who'd been expecting a ghost story. The film's supernatural elements are indeed ultimately just red herrings and/or abandoned plot threads... but I like that. Ditto the two unexplained deaths. They're so blatantly left dangling that I can only admire the filmmakers' brass neck and acknowledge that I hadn't predicted where this film was going at all.

Our heroes are four schoolgirls. They watch horror movies, but only one of them (Kaoru) is a gore fiend and the others might keep their eyes closed. Anyway, there's been a death nearby and Kaoru thinks it's related to Hikiko-san (the ghost of a Japanese schoolgirl who'd been bullied or abused to the point of physical deformity). Is there a ghost nearby? Will there be more deaths?

The cast are decent, despite mostly being amateurs. I liked the mute "mmm?" conversation, for instance. They feel like real friends acting in a movie together. It also helps that the filmmaking style is minimalist, e.g. no incidental music except in scary bits. Everything's diegetic. What you see is exactly what was in front of the cameras. I don't think they even used CGI. (The camerawork's capable of being stylish and/or imaginative, though, and both the writer and director have done plenty of other films. Mind you, I think the director's work is all straight-to-video horror like this and I hated his Hikiko-san vs. Kuchisake-onna.)

There will be bullying. At first it's irrational and stupid, but eventually it becomes gross. Its most horrifying aspect might be the ex-friends. Then there's Kaoru's father, who deserves exactly what he gets and is evil enough to make me wonder if he murdered those two children.

There's sanity-slipping. There are needles and cutter blades. There what looks like a Hikiko-san origin story, except that you'd need a time loop because everyone in the film knows about Hikiko-san already. Incidentally, the film never explains Hikiko's lore and expects you to know it already, e.g. dragging people and "You must like toads because you're Hikiko." The story feels incomplete and I was startled when the credits rolled... but in a good way. They've completed the important thing, i.e. the character story. I think I know what's coming next. (Bye bye, bullies.) You could steer an ocean tanker through what's been left unexplained, but that's okay. (Also, two years later, Hisaaki Nagaoka made Scream Girls 2 and it's theoretically possible that it might contain explanations, despite the lack of any crossover cast members.)

This one's surprisingly good. Its cast are watchable. It works. That's not always true of Hisaaki Nagaoka's movies (to put it mildly), but I enjoyed this one.