Kfoyu

We made it! This is also known as The Sylvian Experiments so I'm expecting Elfs... or small woodland creatures...

A husband and wife witness experiments that allow victims patients to see reality, and their small kids witness the light... cut to later, the mother is now a rather psychotic doctor who is repeating the experiments, and her latest subject happens to be her own daughter. The sister is trying to work out what is going on, and gets caught up in her mother's plans and her sister's new take on reality.

It's weird, and I think I got a grasp on what was going on, but it's easily possible that I mixed up who was whomst. The movie tries to make a deal out of seeing the reality, and it being the afterlife, but the effects can't really keep up, and the best we got is strange contacts in the actresses' eyes, and really bad CGI light effects. And possibly the whole thing was a dream, I'm not sure...

This movie has a concept it is wanting to portray, but doesn't pull it off well. It isn't terrible, but it's not great.

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Kiadan

This was hard to track down with english subs, but I got the gist.

A samurai says "ha, lol, you owe me money" and the debtor tries to attack the samurai and is killed, but curses the samurai, and everyone is dead except the two young daughters of the debtor and even younger kid of the samurai. Cut to 25 years later, and a tobacco seller falls in love with a teacher, but troubles abound because you'll never guess who they are! Well, the movie makes no real secret of it, and you can tell by the set up I give how it works, so yeah, there are troubles all over the place and more death, because of the curse, as the children live out the curse of the parents (well, just the one guy, but it was an effective curse, and got everyone).

One of those movies set in more historic times, so samurais are more common and people get to dress up in period clothing. It's not terrible, but aside from a small hint of a ghost, most of the supernatural effort is by the curse and so it's more people going "wait, no!" as bad things happen.

Frankly, can be skipped, and easy to do so as there are so many movies named "ghost story"...

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Rebritution

Halfway there, so next one up!

A detective looks into a case of a woman drowned in salt water, but there are odd things happening and it looks like he's mildly implicated. Then another person is similarly drowned, and he goes all ACAB on bringing the murderer in, but that murderer doesn't know anything about the earlier killing, and sees someone no-one else can. The detective starts to see a woman in red, and after another death he just wants to get away with his mistress. However, the woman in red has other plans, and retribution will be gained!

This just feels rather muddled. The victims and indeed the murderers are rather random, just because the woman in red shows up. The detective sort of happens to work out what is going wrong, but even he is still under her influence, and then she kills just because and... yeah, muddled.

The performances are fine, nothing outstanding. The effects are... pretty ropey, even for 2006. To be honest, if this wasn't part of the series, I doubt anyone would bother watching it.

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Prenomition

This was released as a pairing with the previous movie.

A father sees a newspaper that predicts his daughter's death... which happens immediately. He separates from his wife, and leads a somewhat empty life, while the mother becomes a researcher with a focus on premonitions. He gets more premonitions, although he tries to stop them, while she teams up with him again to try to understand. When he is successful, everything falls apart, until he finally does what he's wanted to for years.

This is about grief... yep, straight up, your kid dies and you have to live with that, and can you? The parents barely can, but are subjected to some strange events happening that just seem to compound that grief around other people.

This is a slow build of a movie, with only one gore moment, but with, again, lots of character moments.

It's basic, but it gets on with what it's trying to do.

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Inceftion

Oh wait, this is part of a whole J-Horror Theater... let's roll it back to the first one!

At an overwhelmed hospital, the staff is having trouble taking care of patients, and accidentally kill one. Wanting to avoid exposure, they are willing to help another doctor to examine a patient that was dropped off, that decomposes into green goo... and that green goo proves to be rather infectious and gets into the staff's heads. And it goes downhill from there...

I might have seen this before, but definitely paid more attention this time around. This is definitely more about trying to bury secrets in a hospital with problems, but we get this with green goo. It oozes out, which is the worse part of gore on screen (with a minor part of skin falling off), so this is more about the characters than the situation.

For me j-horror is more about the atmosphere anyway and while not amazing, this does well with what it has.

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Recarination

I'm just a sucker for j-horror.

Nagisa is a would be actress, and she eventually gets hired to be a part of a movie that is recreating a murder spree from 30 years previous. However, she is getting flashes from back then, especially about the last victim, the little girl. What is her connection, and will anyone be able to survive the memories?

I'm sure there are people who will go "hey, I know who she is" and I should have picked it up way earlier, but I went for the obvious here. I hope it's not intended that all the characters are supposed to be reincarnations, as the timelines don't really work out, but whatever, this is j-horror, things happen.

There are good performances, but I think I got two of the actresses confused. The effects are decent, and not high on gore while still leaving not a lot to the imagination. There are a few good ghost kills, but most are off screen.

Certainly one for the genre fans.

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Edging the Shadow

Oooh, a Jackie Chan movie? Don't mind if I do!

The police have AI and other electronics working for them, but getting cyberattacked doesn't help as a small team attack a bank and (eventually) get away. They call in retired cop Wong Tak-chung, who thinks they are up against an old foe of his, The Shadow. Wong trains up a new group, and they track down the Shadow, but the Shadow's own group isn't against using him against them, and try their own thing. There is another bit hit planned, but everyone is gathering around and attacks are all over the place.

This is a little confusing at times, and for many moments I was just sitting back and letting it wash over me, but hey, it's a fun (in the enjoyable, not comedic, sense) action flick so thinking too hard was never the top priority.

There's a lot of "kids these days" messages, with Wong and the Shadow getting old-school, and Zifeng Zhang as Wong's niece with a chip on her shoulder, but more than capable herself but still needing to prove herself. There are some very nice character moments, but you better believe there is full on Chan style action scenes knocking things about.

I don't know if the sequel will happen, but I hope I catch it if it does!

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