[KFCC] Review

Story: The story follows school girl Midori (Risa Goto) who returns to the town in which she grew up. She arrives at school to spot a childhood friend, Ryusuke (Ryuhei Matsuda), who happens to be a classmate. In the school there’s a dangerous trend emerging of school girls asking for their love fortunes to be read by a mysterious ghost boy, when summoned the boy can predict whether or not the girl will ever find her true love. The truth proves a bitter pill to swallow, however, when one girl’s (mis)fortune encourages her to take her own life. Midori soon finds herself entangled in the midst of this paranormal activity, as well as various chains of love triangles at school.

Review: While the story sounds like a standard, run-of-the-mill, haunted high school-horror flick there’s a certain nuance to Love Ghost which sets it apart from similar films, such as Whispering Corridors, as it’s an eerie and effective drama/thriller masquerading as a horror. It almost reminded me of a PG-13, Asian rendition of Roger Avery’s “Rules of Attraction” in the manner in which so many events are triggered off by one another, and characters end up affecting each other’s lives inadvertently via actions, reactions, and interactions.

Eventually everyone has a link to someone else, and there’s no real break in the chain anywhere. These sequences of love triangles (or hexagons, rather) are far closer to the forefront of this movie than the supernatural. It’s in this sense that you’re likely to find yourself drawing references to Memento Mori (Whispering Corridors 2) which, again, was a drama with elements of supernatural, rather than being the horror movie it was misinterpreted as. However, stood against Memento Mori, Love Ghost proves to have a far more intuitive plot; more focused in its direction, and more willing to serve a definitive purpose.

Love Ghost can also stand toe-to-toe with Memento Mori in terms of direction, cinematography, and production design, as this has very much retained the feeling of a comic book. Shibuya’s direction is relentlessly adventurous, and he is clearly a director with a varied understanding of camera psychology. Meanwhile cinematographer Tokuaki Kikumura shines in his arrangements of shots, and the techniques by which he pulls them off. He, and those creative folk working on the CGI, really bring a whole other dimension to the ghost segments. Particularly where the ghost boy emerges from his mist to tell the schoolgirls their fate, it is in these instances you can literally feel the comic book influence.

Love Ghost truly is a gem of a film. It’s unique in its own respect, and for this reason it’s almost destined not to get the exposure or recognition it deserves. Every element of the film seems to work well, without being particularly outstanding, and it’s well worth investing the time to sit down and watch.