Review: From hearing the premise and praise of others about this film and given Tokyo Shock's record of entertaining films, like Fudoh The Next Generation and the Story of Ricky, I had looked forward to seeing this "film". Yet after viewing it I couldn't help but to feel cheated and even violated. Misa does contain a few stylish moments and elements but they're overlooked thanks to the abundant cheese factor of the film (It wants to be taken seriously yet executes the serious scenes horribly).

The cast, being all female, held out and even to some extent stood out despite that they were all virtually unknowns to me. But the actresses' performance are hindered thanks to inane dialogue and a typical villain who comes packaged with the conventional evil laugh. Since you are reformatting the reviews I figured that it wouldn't be a problem but it isn't urgent. Though I will hand it to the screenwriter(s) and actresses that actually were able to flesh out realistic characters that didn't have cardboard cutout characteristics. For example the title character Misa, played by Hinako Saeki, was wonderfully multi-layered thanks to a mixture of emotions and actions dealing from mysteriousness, loneliness, acceptance, and violence.

The film classifies itself as horror yet honestly I couldn't find anything even remotely horrifying. As mentioned before, Misa does contain some style: tricked out cinematography that excellently mimics Sam Rami's, some action with graphic violence involving knife play, and an outcome that has its moments. As mentioned above I admired the realistic characteristics involving physically or sexually abused by a loved one, eating disorders, etc. But at the same time I find them to be stereotypical, demeaning, and even damaging to the woman psyche. Yet these conflicting and interesting characteristics are overshadowed due to silly special effects, an incoherent ending that tried to be clever, and clichés for Japanese horror (for example why do all the girls who are about to die seem to be held down by their assailants screaming at the top of their lungs and are filmed as if its some kind of turn-on for the audience) which left me with a bitter afterthoughts.