Trailer - Murasaki Kagami

A trailer has been released for Mitsuhiro Mihara’s new horror film, Murasaki Kagami (The Purple Mirror). Actually, it was released about a week ago via the film’s official website, but the promotional materials and production stills didn’t come out until over the weekend.

Mihara is best known for coming-of-age youth films, comedies, and his 2008 cooking drama Flavor of Happiness, so it’s a bit out of character for him to take the time to write and direct yet another entry to the relatively played-out urban legend sub-genre of J-horror. On top of that, the trailer makes it seem particularly cheap and uneventful. However, the trend of filling these movies with models and gravure idols has a tendency to take the edge off most flaws.

“The purple mirror” is one of Japan’s lesser-known urban legends. It varies wildly by region, with some versions involving an actual purple mirror and some just involving the phrase, but the general idea is that if you can’t manage to forget about it by your 20th birthday, you’ll be killed. The film further modifies the legend by explaining the curse as the grudge of a lonely young girl which has been gradually building inside a mirror for many years. Minako (Saaya) is a member of her high school’s tennis club. The club needs lodging for their upcoming training camp, so they decide to use the old abandoned school building. Inside, there’s a large mirror which has been the subject an urban legend as long as anyone can remember. 10 years ago, two girls decided to test the validity of the legend by chanting the phrase “The purple mirror” while looking into it. One had the skin of her face torn off soon afterward and the other was driven completely insane.

This will be the first starring role for Saaya, who’s been appearing in lots of stuff recently such as Hard Revenge Milly and Yamagata Scream. However, she’s probably still best known for her gravure career. She made her debut while still in elementary school and somehow managed to make the already-skeezy practice of having 11-year-old girls pose provocatively in bikinis seem more dirty to some, simply by filling them out. Former gravure idol Nao Nagasawa plays a teacher at her school.

Nippan will be releasing “Murasaki Kagami” at Theatre Image Forum in Shibuya on June 5, 2010.

Sources: Cinema Today, YouTube