Kokkuri-san (1997)
Studio: Urban Vision
Release Date: May 2, 2006
Directed By: Takahisa Zeze
Cast: Ayumi Yamatsu, Hiroko Shimada & Moe Ishikawa.
Review By: Annie Riordan

Remember a while back when I said “no more torture porn flicks for a very long time?” Yeah, well, I’m adding “murky, incoherent movies about troubled Asian schoolgirls” to that list now too.

Masami is the sexually active borderline slut. Hiroko is the withdrawn virgin in love with Masami’s boyfriend Akira. Mio is the girl with a dark secret in her past who also has an alter ego as a promiscuous late night radio talk show host named Midori. The girls have a lot in common, including a tendency to wear their school uniforms at all times, no matter the occasion. Even Mio delivers her radio show still clad in pleated navy skirt, pinafore, and knee socks.

The girls also share an interest in a board game which seems to be the Japanese equivalent of Ouija. Calling upon an ancient female spirit named Kokkuri, the girls ask the usual and seemingly harmless questions about life, love, sex, and boys. But late one dark and stormy night, the game takes a sinister turn and Kokkuri begins exposing secrets that the girls would rather not know, and refuses to leave when the girls decide to end the game. Soon, the girls are turning on one another, as teenage girls are oft wont to do. And that dark secret in Mio’s past? Yeah, um…I have no idea. Something to do with her mom banging some dumpy dude on the beach?

This movie lost me pretty early on. In the never to be forgotten words of the late Kurt Cobain: “Teenage angst has paid off well, now I’m bored and old.” And boy was I bored. (And we’re not even going to get into the “old” part of that argument, so just forget it.)

I might have been more willing to make my own sense out of the incredibly muddy and convoluted storyline if there had been anything even remotely worthy of my attention in this movie, but Kairo this ain’t. Sitting through Kokkuri is like eating dry toast…or plain tofu, whichever you prefer. A half rotted zombie with no knee caps and a good case of the gout moves faster than the pace of this flick. The lethargic performances of the cast are on par with an Thorazine addicted box turtle. And, you know, I’m all for subtlety. Subtlety in horror is great if used correctly, i.e. The Innocents and The Haunting (1963). But if you make the supernatural element of your supernatural horror movie so subtle as to be nonexistent, then you may as well just make a John Hughes film and be done with it.

I had no idea what this movie was about, and I really didn’t care. I was just glad when it was over.