Hitori Kakurenbo Gekijo Ban

Hide and Seek

Japan 2009
produced by
Shuichi Isoda, Yoichi Kobayashi, Takafumi Ohashi, Kazue Udagawa, Kyosuke Ueno for JollyRoger
directed by Masafumi Yamada
starring Yukie Kawamura, Mayuko Kawakita, Masahiro Usui, Ben Yuzawa, Yuzu Kubota, Miyu Wagawa, Toshihiko Yamamoto, Mayumi Hori, Jun Sugawara, Hiroshi Umeda, Shoichi Matsuda, Naoko Iketani, Wakahiro Inukai, Mami Sato, Maari, Ami Hirose, Tsubasa Takasu, Hinano, Sae Abe, Sakura Kawasaki, Naoko Mori
written by Takeshi Miyamoto, Masafumi Yamada, music by Hiroki Yasaka, special makeup effects by Atsuko Otake

review by
Mike Haberfelner

There is obviously an urban legend around that says if you substitute your favourite doll's stuffing with rise, tie it up and drown it, and hide yourself in a cupboard, a ghost will come and get you A highschool teacher starts to research this, especially after one of her students and a colleague have vanished trying out above experiment. And after much to and fro and a bit of haunting along the way, the teacher finds out that she is actually at the center of the whole urban legend, because the ghost in question is a girl who drowned when they were playing hide-and-seek ...

Very routine exercise in J-horror moviemaking of the urban legends-variety that came into vogue at least after Ringu, with which this film shares quite a few motives. Now that wouldn't essentially be a bad thing, the problem with Hide and Seek is that it simply isn't very good: It's intentionally slow pace derives its story of its effectiveness (just like a too frantic pace would), its shock scenes are simply not all that scary, and its basic mystery is pretty much predictable on one hand and not very involving at the other. In all, not a movie worth seeing.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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