Shibuya kaidan

This is a wee duology of movies, so much so I could easily believe they were made at exactly the same time.

We start with The Locker, in which a group of college friends have a camping trip, and then strange things start happening to them... because of them also used a cursed locker! There was a discarded baby put into the locker, and now the baby is out for revenge on anyone that dares use it! There are six of them, and can you guess how many are alive by the end?

One of them was teaching a middle school student, who is whomst we follow in The Locker 2. She's warier of the locker, but others aren't, and so bad things continue to happen. We get one more line of lore (the baby was discarded 5 years ago) but otherwise this is just following more people and more deaths. Who will survive? Don't bet on it!

The same actors and locations, and being released in the same year, is what makes me think they were made at the same time, and given both are barely over 70 minutes, they really are a part 1 and part 2.

There is somewhat of a slow build, with enough strange things happening to keep you interested. There are a few weird death effects, but mainly people being pulled into nothingness (very Ju-on reminiscent).

A double feature if you want a full film, but ultimately nothing that impressive these days.

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Cavaet

Damian McCarthy released a new movie, so let's see his first one!

An uncle askes his friend to keep his niece company, she has a few mental problems. He reluctantly agrees, and finds out that the house is indeed out of the way. There are definitely some odd things happening, but are their supernatural things happening? He and the niece don't necessarily get along, and there are some secrets that come up that cause more than a few problems. But surely the uncle is completely on the up and up, right?

This is a very small cast, with Johnny French and Leila Sykes being the two we spend the most of the movie with. And they do come across as quite uncertain and untrustworthy, like the movie as a whole... and that is one big problem I have with the movie. It's all "what is going on?" but I'm feeling that in a bigger "what the hell is any of this to do with anything?" and not in a creepy unsettling way.

It's got potential and I love a good atmosphere, but I also enjoy having an idea about what the atmosphere is building to. Still, this is his first film, there is more to go.

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Joy of Sudoku

There's this Youtube creator I watch: Cracking the Cryptic.

They started with doing Cryptic Crosswords, but expanded into doing Sudoku puzzles. Then during the lockdown, the sudoku really took off, so much so they went from one video a day (featuring Simon solving) to two puzzles a day (the other being Mark solving). And from that point on, it's been at LEAST two videos a day, and actually a lot more these days.

Just sudoku? Just putting in numbers in a 9x9 grid? Well yes, that's the basic grid, but they are really into crafted variant sudoku. (Most sudokus that appear in newspapers are computer generated ones.) These ones are specially made, often have a great break in, and then a smooth ride through solving. And as for basic...

There are cages, where the digits add to a total. A 'v' or 'x' between cells mean they add to 5 or 10. There are lines; purple lines are renbans where numbers are consecutive, in any order; thermo lines increase in one direction; region sum lines break the lines into equal sums; arrows, diagonals, chess based rules (no digits a knights/kings moves away)...

There are spots outside the grid that give sandwich sums, skyscraper clues, little killer lines. This can mean that the grid itself can be entirely empty...

9x9? Grids can go down to 4x4 or over 11x11.

Recently they have been getting back into cryptics with weekly videos about the Friday puzzle. And on the Patreon they do the Times Monthly Special and... I've heard of those of those words... one or two. Yes, they have a Patreon, where $2 gets you extra videos and monthly puzzles, and $3 for the solutions to those. Mark also does Connections and Gridograms...

And also daily videos of Wordle, and Minute Cryptic...

They do a lot, is the point, and if you enjoy good puzzles and seeing how to solve them, this is a great channel to follow.

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There She Comes

Sequel? Like immediate sequel, it's the next day!

Grace is taken to hospital after her new husband died, and her sister turns up. However, ex-hubby family has decided that steps need to be taken and kidnap both of them, and Grace must die before dawn so one of them can get the seat.

Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton are sister... sure, okay... and they are fine. They get kind of an arc, which is about three scenes of them yelling at each other in between lots of violence. Quite comic violence at that! David Cronenberg is appropriately creepy in his cameo, and Sarah Michelle Geller should get better parts than this. The only one clearly having fun is Elijah Wood.

Theme-wise, it's the same as the first movie, only with more people. And the movie looks about the same too, so... successful sequel that is just the first movie again? Seems like. It works, but doesn't do anything amazing.

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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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Maddy and Sabby!

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