It wasn’t much scary because the more you show of the ghosts and the less frightening they are. The story didn’t make much sense, the ending was too open, and too many things are not explained.
It starts with the words: “when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. The curse gathers in that place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury”.
We first see a woman waking up very normally and asking her Peter (Bill Pullman) why he’s up so early. He doesn’t say a word but quietly throws himself off the balcony to his death.
We move to another house where Yoko goes to take care of old Emma and the house when Jennifer’s out. She hears something, goes up in the attic to check, alone with only a lighter, and the ghost gets her.
We now meet Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Doug (Jason Behr). She followed him here to be together. He’s studying for his ‘architecture midterm’ and working in a restaurant (I think) while Karen came here as an exchange student, also volunteering at the care center for three months now for social welfare credits.
Since Yoko’s disappeared, Alex (Ted Raimi) sends Karen who has never been out in the field before. She finds Emma alone and in need of assistance. She sees a door taped shut and a noise like a child - or a cat - so she opens and she sees a black cat and a little boy who says his name is Toshio. While in Emma’s room - who says she wishes for ‘her’ to leave her alone - the big ghost of ‘her’ fills the room and they both see her.
Flashback to Emma’s family buying the house. The seller knew and saw but of course said nothing because he wanted to sell. We see Emma (Grace Zabriskie) with her son Matthew (William Mapother) and her daughter Susan (KaDee Strickland), and his son’s wife Jennifer (Clea DuVall). One day the man comes home to find the house a mess, Jennifer ill and unable to speak (I think she was still alive at this point but am not sure), and this unknown boy that screams.
Back to Karen: she called Alex as soon as she found the boy because she didn’t know what to do with him. Now Alex comes to find Emma dead and Karen in shock. The detectives ask him about Matthew who’s been missing a day, like Yoko. The good detective finds him soon: the bodies of Matthew and Jennifer are in the attic, but no sign of Yoko - where did Yoko’s body go? How come the bodies of the couple were found in the attic? How did they get there?I know this is a story about supernatural things and curses and ghosts, but things should make sense nonetheless.
They think, apparently, that Matt killed his wife and then himself... why? how do they think she died? how is he supposed to have killed himself, up there in the attic, sitting down with her close to him? Did the ghosts fake a gun shot??
They also think that Emma died in her sleep and this alone put Karen in shock for hours.
Now the ghost-girl and the boy go after Susan - simply because she called on the phone or because she was there when they bought the house? Both maybe. Anyway, it seems the ghost tracks her down via her phone. Since Susan called from the office the ghost appears there, and is recorded on tape... The ghost follows her to her apartment building but has to call her to know which apartment exactly... She locks herself in but the ghost appears under her blankets and Susan disappears in her own bed.
Karen leaves the hospital to go home, seeing the ghost everywhere.
The boy Toshio goes after Alex, and also the bloody corpse of Yoko this time. We’ll be told that he died too. The detective watches the surveillance video of Susan’s office building and he sees the ghost too.
Karen googles Toshio and finds out about Peter’s death so she goes to talk to his wife and looking at pictures of him she finds the same woman in ALL of them.
Flashback to Peter at school, talking about having received strange letters from a girl he doesn’t remember but she writes that she’s attended his classes (or at least one). To settle the matter, he goes to her house, and when he sees Toshio hurt he tries to help. The boy makes the meow sounds like a cat. This probably happened three years ago, because we hear detective Nakagawa talk about three detectives his friends who three years ago died because they were investigating some murders at that same house.
After what happened and after seeing the ghost on video, Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) thinks of the curse and goes to burn down the house, but when he gets there he hears a boy crying, and then sees him drowning in the bathtub so he tries to help but someone - a male hand - drowns him instead.
Doug finds Karen’s research in their house and leaves a message saying that he thinks she’s there so he’s going there to meet her. She runs as fast as she can to stop him entering that house but she’s too late.
When she gets there she sees Peter and learns that Kayako was ‘in love’ with him - I’d say dangerously obsessed, not in love, though. She even collected his cut fingernails and taped them inside her diary :-/
She follows Peter as he finds all their family pictures with Kayako’s face cut out, then Peter finds her corpse in the attic. After reading her journal and learning of her obsession, Kayako’s husband went mad, he drowned the cat, killed his wife and son and then hanged himself.
Karen finds Doug in shock ( I think, very much like Jennifer, not sure if they were both found dead or almost dead) and the bloody ghost goes after them. Karen sets the house on fire, but later we learn that she was saved, and so was the house.
The last scene shows Karen to see Doug’s body in the morgue - alone, they left her... - when the ghost appears there behind her. This is the end: will she die too now? Who knows. If she dies, then Nakagawa and everyone who entered that house should die too. Anyway, why was the ghost Kayako? Why we kept seeing Toshio? The only one who ‘died in a powerful rage’ was the husband, I’d have thought, not them. How does this curse work, that it used Kayako and Toshio’s ghosts and Yoko’s corpse too? How did they all die, of fear or where they hurt some other way, since the detectives thought of murder?
I don’t like stories that don’t make sense.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento