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likes:

- ryosuke. he kinda reminded me of ryuji from p5, and I liked his outfits, but of course I’d watch a horror movie and be thinking about the outfits. it was funny that he had to write down, “print screen,” or else he’d forget to hit the button that’s right there on his keyboard.

- the overall aesthetic. I feel like this isn’t exactly praise tho, as it’s just what things looked like in that period of time, and not some crazy accurate present day imitation. my partner and I kept pausing to try to see what video games ryosuke had.

- the sound design. this was honestly the best part about the movie imo. the screeching dial-up-internet-esque sounds provided so much tension on what would’ve otherwise been mid or boring scares. I loved the scare that had the sound build up only to go completely silent.

- leave it to japan to still have the trains running during a ghost apocalypse lol

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dislikes:

- the relationship between harue and ryosuke. it just didn’t feel fleshed out, and I didn’t feel like there was really a connection between these two characters. harue as a character was a let down as well. I thought there would be some connection between her and the killings or the way they started, and that would be why she was so fixated on this whole thing before it even blew up, but we literally know nothing about her motivations. and why wouldn’t she be the one to tell ryosuke about the maximum capacity ghost realm theory (mcgrt) and not the rando grad student that we never see or hear about again? why wouldn’t she be the one to point out the ghost kid in the library to him and not the random grad student? they literally already had a scene in the library together where it could’ve been added in. I think she just existed to give ryosuke somebody to save or lose, which is lame and lazy.

- the inconsistency. there was no clear, singular pattern to the killings. if we’re to believe mcgrt, then what was all that talk about loneliness, and people wanting to die because they felt alone? if mcgrt is true, wouldn’t the pattern be: ghost leaks into room > room is taped off > somebody goes into taped room > has a traumatic experience because of the ghost > deletes themself days later. this would make the whole internet and technology thing completely irrelevant.

alternatively, if the internet IS relevant to all of this, wouldn’t it be like: the original video (the one shown multiple times of the guy with a bag over his head and writing on the wall behind him) is some sort of cursed video that has set off a chain curse that latches on to people online like some sort of virus. this curse, or virus, makes people feel overwhelmingly lonely until they decide to delete themselves days later. the virus is also watching these people through computer screens. given the time period, with the whole y2k scare and it being the dawn of the internet, I feel like the movie was trying to have some sort of “internet bad” message, and this second theory would fit into that while making all of the loneliness talk make sense.

however, the movie unsuccessfully combines these two things…I guess? I literally don’t understand what this movie was trying to say was going on. the thing is, I LOVE horror media that doesn’t explain itself. I have a whole shelf filled of junji ito’s works. I love ARGs because of the work you have to put in to understand them. being spoon fed a word for word explanation absolutely kills a horror media for me. BUT there’s a fine line between show-don’t-tell and just straight up throwing things at the wall and having the audience make up whatever they want out of whatever fucking sticks. so many good horror movies nowadays do the show-not-tell thing, and because of this, people have started to think that not fully understanding a movie right away = cinematic masterpiece. that’s why shitty writing like this ends up being lauded as a “cult classic” in the grand year of 2024.

- why was the computer lab that harue was working in trashed? it’s literally never brought up.

- there was all this build up for what people see when they go into a taped off room, and then once we finally got to see it from ryosuke’s pov, it was literally just some guy…

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overall