If this movie weren't trying so hard, it would be scarier. Like many horror films, it sets to work on us right from the beginning, before anything is happening to be scared about: immediately the Psycho music kicks in and the camera moves jarringly. These devices have the effect on me of recognizing them to be independent of what the screen's showing. At the same time, the movie develops in the standard deliberate monotone of Japanese thrillers, but whereas in some of them, e.g. Ring, the audience is actually being fed information at a steady rate, here it has to wait a long time to find out what's going on, and this does not particularly arouse curiosity. It is quite interesting, however, once it's revealed--more interesting than the story that's built around it. Although the theme--the erosion of the line between the living and the ghostly--is accurately illustrated by the central image--ghostlike figures on monitors--somehow the phenomenon seems not quite to jibe with the explanation of it. And the last stage of the invasion, if it can be called that, happens very suddenly, and I don't understand how it came to happen. (This section of the movie looks a lot like anime.)
This director's films all tend to remind me of other movies. Cure is like Angel Dust, and this one is like Ring, with computers. To me they never seem to get far beyond the resemblances; never seem quite to get where they're going.
This director's films all tend to remind me of other movies. Cure is like Angel Dust, and this one is like Ring, with computers. To me they never seem to get far beyond the resemblances; never seem quite to get where they're going.