Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Leofwine_draca SADAKO VS. KAYAKO is a Japanese horror film notable for featuring the vengeful supernatural titans of two separate series - the RINGU series and the JU-ON series - combined in a story which results in the ghosts fighting each other, a bit like FREDDY VS. JASON. It's an irresistable premise for any fan of J-horror, although of course the end result hardly exceeds expectations and is a bit disappointing if you expect too much. For most of the running time this feels like two mini-films, with plenty of cross-cutting between re-treads of the Ringu mythology and the Grudge house. It's a dark and gloomy affair, with subdued performances and a handful of familiar and creepy moments, but it's only right at the end where it gets more fun and over the top. Masanobu Ando's turn as a crazy medium is the highlight of the performances, while the rest is rather subdued.

Michael Ledo Students discuss various urban legends at Seian University, among which are the cursed video tape. Two students accidentally discover the tape and freak out as the previous viewers had died. They consult their professor who is excited about the tape and wants to meet Sadako, the Ring girl with the long hair. Meanwhile is a subplot, a house is haunted by Kayako, the Juon/Grudge double jointed kid.How they get these two demons/spirits to fight would be a plot spoiler revealed at about an hour into the film...and I still have my reservations. Of course my biggest question mark about all these exorcism films going all the way back to the original is the ending. A demon possesses someone and the priest then takes the demon inside himself and does the suicide thing. Demon dies too. Why exactly does a spiritual/metaphysical demon end when the host dies? Right before the priest hits the ground... go back to someone else. It is a distance thing like a six cubit rule? Who is making these silly rules up and why does everyone follow them? The film was not as good as the originals. Jump scares were ineffective. The wise guy exorcist was the highlight of the film and added a smile element to the feature.Guide: No swearing, sex, nudity or cute school uniforms

BA_Harrison Schoolgirl Natsumi (Aimi Satsukawa) asks her friend Yuri (Mizuki Yamamoto) if she can transfer her parents' wedding video onto DVD; in order to do so, the girls buy an old VHS player in which they discover an old tape that turns out to be a fabled cursed video that, once watched, invokes deadly long haired spook Sadako (Elly Nanami), who materialises to kill her victims two days later.After their initial attempts to break the curse fail, Natsumi and Yuri's only hope lies with spiritual medium Kyozo (Masanobu Andô) and his young assistant Tamao (Maiko Kikuchi), who decide to pit Sadako against grudge spirits Kayako (Runa Endo) and Toshio (Rintaro Shibamoto) in a battle for the girls' souls. Meanwhile, schoolgirl Suzuka (Tina Tamashiro) also finds herself cursed when she enters the haunted home of Kayako and her son Toshio — can Suzuka's life also be saved as a result of the supernatural battle?Films featuring onryō (vengeful Japanese spooks) really do very little for me: I thought that Ringu (Ring) was mediocre and found The Grudge (Ju-on) incredibly boring. Director Kôji Shiraishi tries to inject a little life into the tired genre with this mash-up of these well known franchises, but all he succeeds in making is a film that, rather predictably, falls somewhere between mediocre and incredibly boring.Following lots of talk and some not-at-all-scary scenes in which the spooks make brief appearances, the titular fight between the ghosts finally ensues, and it's extremely underwhelming, like two women having a pathetic cat-fight, with little kid Toshio sticking up for his mum. If you're an avid fan of Japanese ghost movies, you might get a kick out of seeing these legendary spirits scratch and claw at each other, but I'll never understand the appeal.

Raven-1969 Demons in Japanese culture, may take human form. Or semi-human form if they prefer. One such demon, Kayako, inhabits a house and attacks those who enter it. The demon Sadako curses and appears to those who happen to see her frightening video clip. Two young women, one of whom is cursed by Sadako, figure that the only way to survive is to pit the two demons against each other. A spectral showdown ensues.While it is a creative concept and it is an intriguing glimpse at Japanese horror culture, there is not much depth here. There are few twists and even less in terms of dialogue. For a foreign horror film, I expected more shocking behavior, yet it seems to be made for a PG-13 crowd. Little bawdiness and less blood spilled. Seen at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.