(2005)
Overall: GREAT
The production companies that helped make Kōji Shiraishi's Noroi: The Curse have both ceased to be due to bankruptcy, as has an American outfit that likewise planned on pushing the film on DVD in 2009. Ultimately meaning that it has lingered in some obscurity since 2005, which is a shame since the resulting movie represents an exemplary mark in found footage. A mockumantery on a mockumentary, it logically affords for editing, creepy music, and the ghost hunter crew's motivations to keep on shooting. There are no, "who would keep filming all of this?" or "who is compiling all this footage together?" questions to distract you in other words, though the footage that they do capture would certainly make headlines. There are several characters and locations to keep track of due to the multi-layered plot, with every new detail becoming more interesting and supernaturally unsettling. An argument can be made that tin-foil man may have been a bit much as we the viewer come awfully close to laughing at him when we are probably not supposed to, but his appearance is just another curious and disturbing detail to an already satisfying abundance of them.
Overall: GREAT
The production companies that helped make Kōji Shiraishi's Noroi: The Curse have both ceased to be due to bankruptcy, as has an American outfit that likewise planned on pushing the film on DVD in 2009. Ultimately meaning that it has lingered in some obscurity since 2005, which is a shame since the resulting movie represents an exemplary mark in found footage. A mockumantery on a mockumentary, it logically affords for editing, creepy music, and the ghost hunter crew's motivations to keep on shooting. There are no, "who would keep filming all of this?" or "who is compiling all this footage together?" questions to distract you in other words, though the footage that they do capture would certainly make headlines. There are several characters and locations to keep track of due to the multi-layered plot, with every new detail becoming more interesting and supernaturally unsettling. An argument can be made that tin-foil man may have been a bit much as we the viewer come awfully close to laughing at him when we are probably not supposed to, but his appearance is just another curious and disturbing detail to an already satisfying abundance of them.
(2007)
Overall: MEH
Kōji Shiraishi's Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, (Kuchisake-onna, A Slit-Mouthed Woman), is his follow-up to the exceptional found footage film Noroi: The Curse and it fits squarely in the Japanese, vengeful spirit mold. Playing by the rules fairly enough for fans of conventional J-horror aesthetics, the story is based on the urban legend about the Kuchisake-onna, a very specific form of ghost that confronts people with a pair of large scissors while wearing a long coat, surgical mask, and of course donning extensive black hair. Oh and she also has a Glasgow smile and yellow eyes because creepy. This is a comparatively more nasty horror movie than those aimed at a teenage, younger adult audience as the title monster engages in child abducting and abusing, with several uncomfortable scenes of the latter being shown in an unflinching manner. She is an effectively unsettling bogey-woman to be sure, but Shiraishi sticks too close to the formula to truly elevate it above the heard.
(2009)
Overall: WOOF
Very regrettably, Kōji Shiraishi took a detour from bone-chilling found footage and bog-standard J-horror into deliberately off-putting torture porn with his third full-length Grotesque, (Gurotesuku). If one was to be, (very), generous, this can be seen as a parody of horror's most unnecessary sub-genre since the "story" consists of nothing more than some asshole physically, sexually, and psychologically torturing two people throughout the entire running time. That is all that happens and that is all it is. Thankfully, that running time is only seventy-three minutes which is a sort of mild saving grace, but that seventy-three minutes is so comically relentless that it bypasses being disturbing and is just childishly obnoxious. Maybe there was a point to this besides just utter stupidity but if there was, who cares? It is probably the only instance where the British Board of Film Classification's banning of a movie was justified. If only every other country and Shiraishi himself had the same idea to just stop this thing from existing in the first place.
(2009)
Overall: MEH
The second film from Kōji Shiraishi to be released in 2009, Teketeke is typical, vengeful spirit J-horror of the minuscule budget variety. Nearly every element to the rudimentary story is a well-worn trope; an urban legend set up, schoolgirl protagonists, characters uncovering the ghost's mystery and trying to adjust something regarding their final resting place that of course does absolutely nothing to stop the supernatural activity, etc. The only thing really distinguishing it from the bigger named movies which it is directly channeling is the noticeably low production values that force Shiraishi to engage in very few frightening set pieces while keeping the length at a mere seventy-minutes. That said, the title spectre does look pretty unique when it finally emerges, bypassing the standard "long black hair hanging in front of its face" female and instead being a weird, half-torso homeless demon thing. The movie is pretty unoffensive overall and does not overstay its welcome at least so fans of such familiarity will probably get enough kicks out of what is here.
(2009)
Dir - Kōji Shiraishi
Overall: MEH
No Japanese, (or otherwise), director champions the found footage sub-genre as much as Kōji Shiraishi and his second yet by no means last example Occult, (Okaruto), explicitly adheres to the mockumentary presentation he offered up with his first, Noroi: The Curse. While the similarities in presentation are incidental and one could even see this as existing in the same universe, it falls short of the overall excellence that its superb predecessor offered up. The supernatural story here is too vague, mostly being a collection of barely noticeable coincidences that are sporadically spread apart over the running time; a running time that overstays its welcome at nearly two hours long. Large portions of the film go by with little of interest happening and when something finally does, such revelations merely come off with a shrug. By making the details so equivocal and filling up everything in between with uninteresting nonsense, Shiraishi loses the viewer almost completely, with other things such as the embarrassingly bad visual effects and head-scratchingly stupid character behavior standing out even more.
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