(1996)
Reviewed by Peter Svensson
Directed by Hideo Nakata
Cast - Yfrei Yanagi, Yasuyo Shiroshima, Kei Ishibashi, Ren Osugi Source - DVD-R"It’s bedtime for sleepyheads"
Even though Hideo Nakata’s Ring is only six years old, it’s almost difficult to remember a time when Sadako didn’t have us too scared to walk past a TV-set. The film has become such an intrinsic part of Japanese horror that you can almost divide it into pre- and post-Ring eras. It has spawned countless clones and has even captivated mainstream audiences since the film was subjected to the most dubious of honours, the Hollywood remake. Through the first Ring sequel, Chaos and Dark Water, Nakata has continued to deliver effective horror and thrills but his first feature, Ghost Actress or Don't Look Up, is rarely discussed. This is mostly due to the difficulty of finding the film with English subtitles. It certainly took me long enough anyway.
Strange things are happening on the set of a wartime drama about two sisters directed by Toshio Murai (Yfrei Yanagi from Ring and Ju-On). Both he and the lead actress Hitomi Kurokawa (Yasuyo Shiroshima) sense that something or someone is watching them.
While having the dailies screened, the crew find themselves watching footage from a 1970’s feature showing a woman with a ghostly presence behind her and a child walking up stairs to a creepy attic instead of the scenes filmed hours earlier. The occurrence is dismissed as mix up between used and unused filmstock but Murai vaguely remembers seeing the footage on TV when he was a child. Murai asks a projectionist to look into the films origin but when returning to pick the film up, the projectionist claims he was unable to find anything out and has burned the film ("It felt evil"). Soon after, one of the lead actresses falls to her death from the rafters during a break and Murai is convinced that he saw somebody up there with her just before she fell. When he finds out that the actress in the 70’s film fell to her death during filming he realizes that they might all be in danger.
Based on a story by Nakata and scripted by the future scriptwriter of Ring, Ghost Actress really seems like a dry run for Ring in a lot of ways but those hoping for something quite as creepy are likely to be disappointed. In terms of the production there is little to fault here. Nakata’s direction is competent for a first time director, the acting is very good and the film studio setting works really well. The problem is that the film doesn’t seem to work that well as a ghost story.
Both Ring and Dark Water are excellent examples of how to slowly build a creepy atmosphere without resorting to cheap scare tactics. Ghostly images flash quickly before the camera and people’s reactions are shown but the full horrors are implied rather than being shown. This kind of approach usually works well and kicks the viewer’s imagination into high gear. Unfortunately very little of that is found here. The ghost actress herself might seem like a prototype for Sadako but rather than giving us fleeting looks of her, she is shown in full view very early on in the film. A grave mistake, since her more humanlike appearance makes her a far less horrifying entity than Sadako and she never really feels like a threat to any of the main characters. Many of the potentially scary scenes are also severely hurt by a painfully inappropriate score that sounds more like something out of a 80’s slasher flick than anything else.
The script has a few problems as well. The main characters are sketched quite loosely and even though they seem sympathetic enough you never really connect with them. However, the biggest problem is that there is never any real sense that the film is building towards a climactic ending. Scenes are played out but there’s no feeling of them really furthering the story or leading our main characters towards any kind of conclusion.
Considering the lack of a build up to the finale, I still found the last few minutes of the film rather effective. It’s not a show-stopping set piece to rival Sadakos exit from the TV-set but it’s effective none the less. Nakata wasn’t content to end the film on that cooperative high note though and decided to add a rather unnecessary and slightly confusing epilogue. Considering how poorly it works here, I’m surprised that he chose to end Dark Water with a similarly ill-fitting epilogue.
The film is unusually short, only 75 minutes, and even though all plot points don’t always have to be neatly tied together, I still felt like a few too many were left hanging at the end of the film. Very little was explained about the Ghost Actress’ presence. Murai’s feelings for Kurokawa weren’t explored neither was his memory of watching the unaired TV-film. Did he actually see it? Was it some sort of premonition?
It’s not as good as Ring but those with an interest in Nakata’s career are well advised to seek it out. It might seem like the film has got little going for it but I found it enjoyable despite its shortcomings and it is interesting to see the origins of themes and ideas that Nakata would later expand on to much greater effect.
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