The film's quite good and I was enjoying it... until I hit something I'd last seen in Toshimaen: Haunted Park. There's no ending. The credits rolled and I went "what the hell?" and rewound to see if I'd missed something.

Nope. Unfortunately, I hadn't. Welcome to another J-horror film that thinks a reveal of the ghost's origin story is in itself a satisfying movie ending. Never mind the actual characters we'd been following throughout the film. Oh dear. I disagree. Until then, though, the film had been quite good. Sayo Nagasawa (played by Yuuka Ueno) transfers to a new school and at first everything seems lovely. Sayo's friendly and outgoing, while her classmates are helpful and like to chat. I was optimistic. The headmaster orders a teacher to ensure that there are always fresh flowers in a particular toilet, which obviously looked significant. Then, though, I noticed the dead space around an unpopular girl. She's being bullied. The film rapidly becomes unpleasant, with the bullies not caring when someone turns up dead.

Gradually, the film's focus moves towards a flower-loving small girl who might not still be alive. The name "Hanako" is written with the characters for "flower girl", incidentally. Backstory is uncovered. People meet nasty ends. The film's building up nicely... until it decides to stop because the credits have rolled. (There isn't even a post-credits sequence.)

It's looking as if you should beware of mothers in films about Hanako of the Toilet. The films I watched today and yesterday both have scary mothers who SPOILER SNIPPED, plus some hateful school bullies who probably won't survive Hanako.

In most respects, this is a well made film. It held my attention. I like the cast, even if Yuuka Ueno lacks weight when she's meant to be terrified. The script, though, is a mess and full of things that don't tie up. One wonders if it's a badly resolved collision of warring drafts. What happens to these bullies is oddly thrown away and feels as if important scenes got cut, for instance. Why, in one scene, does Hanako ask for her diary back? (There's no other mention of a diary throughout the film.) What's the connection between that rubbish headmaster and Hanako's flowers? Where's his story going? (He has a spooky confrontation that goes nowhere.) What about the surviving bullies?

This film just needed another ten minutes. Complete the story, basically. Looking back, it's surprising that such a simple, straightforward plot is even capable of leaving so much dangling.