Ghost Gate (Ju-on no Yakata) review

Before watching Ghost Gate I was pretty confident in my ability to enjoy just about horror movie, regardless of how badly made it was. Now I’m not so sure. This one was bad—real bad. Between the crew members’ limbs creeping into various scenes by mistake, boom mikes in the shot too many times to count, and a nearly indecipherable storyline I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say just about anyone could make a better horror movie than this. This baby is high school AV club quality at best. That being said, at times it does inch pretty close to “so bad it’s good” territory. And I suppose on some level that’s a form of entertainment too.

A group of friends arrives at a creepy house intending to investigate a murder that was committed there years earlier. Apparently the secretary of author Munetuga Tokida was brutally stabbed while he was away. The author was absolved of the crime due to a rock-solid alibi but disappeared himself soon thereafter. Recently an unknown party offered a 50,000,000 yen reward to anyone who could enter the house and find clues that solve the mystery. News of this offer was anonymously emailed to Kazuo Shindo (Kouta Namikawa), who was fascinated both by the challenge and the cash.

In his school days Kazuo hung out with a group of friends who fancied themselves ghost hunters. They’d explore areas long thought haunted and see if they could witness anything themselves. After a while a particularly fragile member of the group, Aki (Miho Yabe), started to ruin their trips with the mini nervous breakdowns she’d have whenever she got scared. This got on the group’s nerves and caused them to start picking on her relentlessly. Nevertheless, Kazuo invited her on this new trip anyway - much to the chagrin of everyone else involved.

Kazuo’s friends arrive before him so they’re forced to wait outside for him to show up with the key he received in the mail. Oddly though, when Aki approaches the house she notices the door is already unlocked. She calls out to the group and they decide to get a head start, thinking if they finish early they can split the money four ways instead of five. While searching for clues they find a cell phone. When they turn it on and check the pictures in it they see disturbing images of frightened people in the house and a blurred image of a ghostly figure with long hair. They decide they should probably get the hell out of there but it’s too late, the door is locked behind them. After a few moments considering their predicament Kazuo suddenly appears behind them in the room, having apparently just arrived. They decide they have no choice but to continue the investigation. Unfortunately the ghost woman from the photos has other ideas.

Okay, obviously this storyline is pretty cliché and I’ve covered how badly made this movie is. Unfortunately it also completely whiffed on delivering any sort of scares whatsoever, even cheap ones. Even the lowest budget horror films can benefit from a couple of well-placed shock moments—perhaps a ghost popping up really quickly for a jolt or a gruesome death when you’re not expecting it. Unfortunately Ghost Gate can’t even do that right. Whenever something supposedly scary is about to happen, the screeching violins kick in way ahead of time and you see the potential victim’s horrified face for 30-40 seconds before you see what they’re actually looking at. Then, once every ounce of tension is completely nullified we have to sit through some of the lamest death scenes ever committed to digital video. My personal favorite is the one where a mirror is moved around to make it look like someone is being stretched to death, followed by a cartoonish “splat!” sound.

Storytelling-wise it felt like the writer and director just weren’t on the same page, and with a story this simplistic one wonders why a separate writer would even be needed. I understand cheap movies are shot in a ridiculously short amount of time but that doesn’t excuse the lack of preparation that’s so glaringly obvious onscreen. It appears as though the director just shot every scene exactly as written without understanding exactly why it was written, or how it was all going to fit together in editing. The result is a hodgepodge of characters behaving unrealistically in literally every situation. There are never any establishing shots that clue the viewer in to certain details, so at times it seems as though the characters know things they shouldn’t simply to move the story along quicker. I’m not even sure the actors understood the lines they were delivering either. At one point a character opens up a cabinet and gasps in horror only to say “No, it’s nothing.” Pointless moments like that just sort of accentuate how disjointed this film really is.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, in the US version Laguna Productions committed the cardinal sin of Japanese film importing by leaving out the Japanese vocal track in favor of an English dub—and a bad one at that. The voice actors find it necessary to breathe heavily while characters are casually investigating shelves and spout out lines like “How do we sposed to get the reward money?” and “Man is evil with a capital ‘E’.” I realize the illiterate among us prefer dubs but I don’t understand not even including the original track with subtitles. But I guess I’m just nitpicking at this point. Just avoid subjecting yourself to this movie completely and it won’t be an issue.

Availability: US distributor Laguna Productions released "Ghost Gate" on region 1 DVD on July 17, 2007. For more info, see this post.

Tags