(1995)
Dir - Jōji Matsuoka
Overall: MEH
A clumsy genre offering that blends PG grade school drama with a serial killer mystery, Toire no Hanako-san, (Hanako-san of the Toilet, School Mystery, Phantom of the Toilet), is based off of the urban legend of a young girl's ghost that haunts bathrooms. Besides one or two disembodied giggles, oddly no other such haunting takes place here as we instead have a child-murdering psycho on the loose who does not show up until the third act. This leaves the predominant amount of the running time to merely focus on the students being mean to the new girl who they think is the dead girl for reasons that only bratty kids would come up with. Poorly paced, director Jōji Matsuoka allows for an endless stream of monotonous scenes to play out, sprinkling them with cutesy music and largely forgetting to touch on the fact that a serious threat is even at stake. When the creepy-looking maniac with a sickle finally shows up, he makes some unsettling noises and nobody thinks to turn the lights on in the modern-decored school of the setting, leading to a dopey conclusion where every last teacher and student inexplicably shows up at night to slowly surround the bad guy while the music sores triumphantly.
(1998)
Dir - Kim Jee-woon
Overall: MEH
The debut The Quiet Family, (Joyonghan Gajok), from writer/director Kim Jee-woon is a mediocre black comedy that while showing certain amounts of promise for the filmmaker, also botches its humor and comes off more half-baked than fully-formed. Remade four different times in as many Asian countries, (the most famous and ridiculous of course being Takashi Miike's musical adaptation The Happiness of the Katakuris, which also had stop-motion sequences and zombies in it because drugs), the initial version here goes for a consistent Coen brothers-adjacent tone where a family full of schlubs awkwardly tries to cover up a series of murders, some of which they inadvertently commit. Things grow exponentially worse with every poor decision that they make, which unfortunately should wield more ridiculous results than what is presented here. Instead, we have a series of set pieces that are amusing on paper, yet unmemorable in execution. The pacing suffers as the story becomes more convoluted, monotonous, and incoherent, ending simply because it reached the ninety-minute mark as opposed to revving up to a satisfying payoff. Still, it is well shot, the cast does adequate work, and the soundtrack has a couple of purposely silly choices on it. Any movie where a bunch of people die horrible deaths that also opens with a Delinquent Habits song and ends with The Partridge Family's "I Think I Love You" is obviously doing at least something right.
(1999)
Dir - Hideo Nakata
Overall: MEH
Rightfully ignoring the first official, not-good Ringu sequel Spiral, Toho brought back the writer/director team of Hiroshi Takahash and Hideo Nakata for the for-real-this-time-official-Ringu-sequel Ringu 2, (Ring 2). A confusing move following a confusing follow-up only a year later, the resulting film is also, well, confusing. Once again a pseudo-science angle is introduced that fits in awkwardly with the vengeful spirit mayhem that was strictly adhered to in the original. Takahash's script throws in a barrage of ideas, such as water having some sort of afterlife-summoning powers, Sadako's elderly relative thinking that he can stop all of the shenanigans by returning to the sea, a side plot of another teenager trying to make copies of the cursed video tape for another journalist, the kid who survived the first movie now having arbitrary psychic powers of his own, Sadako reemerging as a clay dummy, and comatose mental patients having ghostly orbs that show up in their Polaroids. This only scratches the surface of ingredients and sadly, there are far too many of them to allow any to land. Nakata keeps the humor almost non-existent, but he also forgets to throw in an adequate amount of spooky bits, despite the consistently dour tone. So in other words, one more swing and a miss that proves that an exceptional horror film is better left alone.
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