Had a great time with this film, nothing new but absolutely solid and a good watch.

The long and short of it: There's no new ground broken for sure, it's a classic J-Horror movie and you'll get what you ask for. Recommend it for sure though all the same, it's a perfectly good film to enjoy. Might not be scary to everyone, but even though it wasn't I had fun. Worth a watch if you like horror and are okay with gore, recommend that you avoid the trailer, it gives away a sequence that would have done a lot better without watching it to leave it as a surprise (eg me who watched it). Make sure to look for the microwave in the beginning also, very funny completely taped to the wall.

Long review into more of the nitty gritty, direct story spoilers avoided:
Its highlights were absolutely the acting, though I can't include the main character in that compliment sadly. I think she was a bit miscast because she doesn't exactly have much face acting behind her. She has 3 expressions max before it's back to default which is a shame because her body and voice acting were good. She did make a good attempt but it was a bit bothersome that she didn't really show much panic when something extreme had happened. Absolutely amazing performances with the rest however, Kazuyo, Shinji, and Yutaro (especially Yutaro, really you could feel the fear that was creeping into him and how terrified he was) being the highlights, stellar performances.
The bloody sequences were done interestingly and, though maybe not unique to the genre, did serve well and were mostly unexpected when they happened. Felt like they shook it up each time and you got more and more progressively violent. The VFX was well done and gave some good visual scares, though the specific eye used gets a bit dull after seeing it over and over again, I wish they varied it a bit more. The scenery has quite a bit to chew on and is shot pretty great most of the time, with some real artistic work done into it, impressive stuff.
Though it's a horror movie, it doesn't quite make you jump out of your seat often. 1 or 2 scares got me but that was it. It was good at setting the dread for the characters involved, but it didn't exactly make me feel much personally. Might be a case-by-case basis however, conclude what you want from it.
A minor annoyance of how perfect they had to make the main character's nails be, they look *too* pristine for the whole movie, but this is just a really small nitpick
The ending was a very good twist honestly and I appreciated what it did. It was surprising and unexpected, leaving you with a good send-off, though I will avoid mentioning how.
In conclusion, I recommend it a lot, please do go watch it if you like j-horror, just don't expect to be terrified by it. It gives a lot else to work with to enjoy otherwise and is a great time to watch especially with friends.

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The most nothing movie one could see.

I don't think I can quite articulate fully how much of a boring film this is except for ironically laughing at some terrible line delivery and bad effects. It made me feel like I wanted to write about how bad it was however so it did *something*.
Short review: Don't watch, It's really not worth 1h 40 unless you want background noise that doesn't really matter.
Long review with full movie spoilers: The opening was the coldest of cold, interesting somewhat but it leaves much to be desired. As the movie progresses, however, it just continues to not deliver on any kind of interest except for flakes of what one would *like* to see, but don't get done or thought of.
The whole plot can just be solved by characters just shutting their mouths and not talking, but no we *need* to have these people killed by them being stupid and blurting out her name. Sometimes in films that's fine if you can see some cool effects or other parts of a film to get attached to at least, but this doesn't even deliver on anything at all. Somewhat decent makeup work but that's about as much credit I can give. The exploded eyes don't *quite* look right but it's nothing goofy bad, just that you can kind of tell it's not real.
The director was *not* good so everything else tumbles down with it, for example, usually good actors in other series who are featured in this give some really bad performances. I've seen Inaba Yu give some amazing performances in Sing in Love and other films/series, but it seemed rather obvious he wasn't given all too much to work with or given little to no direction.
The writing was really something else in terms of how much it missed it's own mark of what it tried to be. None of the characters have much behind them except for the reporter and it's a bit ridiculous how little anything happens to any of them of interest. You just get told something happened either to them or about someone, and go " what? " before it moves on and you don't get anything else. Haruo's conflict with his brother gets brought up twice in such small segments, and then we never see or hear of any of that again, it's like that for basically everything that happens. There's even a whole character death that happens that you don't even see and just get told about in passing after the fact, which was stupid? I genuinely had to ask the friend I was watching it with if I hadn't just gone insane and somehow blocked it out of my brain. It's almost like they couldn't get the actor back to do the scene so they had to hurridly pretend it happened.
Generally how the writing went is that it tells a thing to your face, expecting that to be enough to make a character have background, and then it's never spoken of again and neither do characters reflect on it.
As just a personal opinion, I believe it suffers with having too much to get done in it's runtime, something that may have been nicely fixed if they took out the amount of characters involved and simply let the audience have more time to settle into their character. There are gleams of what could have been in there but none of it comes to reality so you're left with a deflated balloon of a movie.
The ending was rubbish, as, quite literally, it just ends with no significance other than the implication that the main guy dies perhaps. Just a cut to credits. Nothing else. The concept of her hitting her head and forgetting the demon's name and what experiences she had with Haruo was good on paper but executed so awkwardly. The taste of the burnt fish was also strange to have been the thing to come back since she's known her own friend who died at the beginning for much longer. Having a callback to the friend would have been nice rather than her promising she'd remember her and then clearly not doing so for the whole rest of the movie's runtime (unless this is a metaphor of some kind in Japan to taste fish or whatever it was, then feel free to correct me and I will amend my review).
In conclusion, It's a mess of a movie and super not worth your time unless you want to see it as mildly ironically entertaining. I had ironic enjoyment out of watching it by giggling about it with a friend of mine, but man that's 1h39m I'm not getting back. Don't bother with it. Stay clear.

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