Scarecrow

I haven't read the Kakashi manga by Junji Ito that this movie is based on, but I've never known Ito to put a foot wrong yet. I've read a lot of fairly awful reviews of this film - slow, boring etc. - but I kind of have to disagree with them. Yes, Kakashi is a slow-paced film, not much in the way of horror... but it does work very well as a kind of weird drama, although some of the scarecrow scenes are a little... silly, perhaps?

The cinematography is lovely, the story is sensitively handled, and the soundtrack is beautiful... and Kou Shibasaki is even more evil than her role as Mitsuko in Battle Royale ;)

I enjoyed it a lot and I'd definitely recommend it, but more on a drama basis than a horror - it's really not very scary IMHO, compared to some other Japanese films.

I bought this movie 2 months ago because I like Japanese cinema plus it was cheap(and from the director of Ring 0: Birthday. Yes the Japanese series is superior to the American remake. Even Rasen is more interesting than 'The Ring'.). However I didn't watch it until tonight mainly because it didn't get too many favorable reviews on IMDB. That sad I was bored and decided to watch it. And from the first scene I was drawn in... This movie has a rather creepy but melancholy tension thoughout. It's a slow movie yes but boring? Definatly not. The pacing is just right. It amplifies the mystery of the story. Most people who watch scary movies nowadays just expect cheap scares instead of a truly eery atmosphere thoughout. So I think that is what makes a lot of people dislike this movie. This movie isn't big on the scares, it has some but not many, but what it does is make the viewer wonder.

The movie basically is about Kaoru(she's a very pretty girl btw) whose brother is missing. He seems to have gone to visit his girlfriend in a little rural village in the middle of nowhere. That's the last he's heard from. As Koaru goes off to search for him there she finds that things are odd in the village... Everyone seems to be obsessed with a festival(Japan has a lot of festivals for many spiritual things) about scarecrows. And everyone seems to want her to leave and is unwilling to help her...

The ending I found wasn't a dud like someone mentioned but more like a very sad one. More I will not say about this movie. You have to watch it for yourself.

This isn't a movie for people who like cheap scares. But someone who likes mystery and eery things happening will probably like this movie. very reccomended.

Although hampered by a budget that doesn't allow for sterling effects this is a creepy little thriller that works best when showing the least. The story has echoes of any one of a dozen other films from Spirited Away to Wicker Man, but there is something about the underlying tension and feeling that something thats not right thats makes the film watchable for me. Its the trip thats the joy here, not the destination simply because you'll probably know what that is way in advance of our heroine. As long as they keep the scarecrows in the distance this is a creepy little gem that should be seen by those who are willing to go with a good but flawed film.

Subtle & Understated Horror, & yet all the better for it.

I have seen numerous 'horror' films & have to state that the vast majority are derivative & lacking. Kakashi however whilst dealing with a very tired subject matter approaches it in a very atmospheric way, relying on visuals & incidentals rather than narrative & action.

I cannot recommend this too highly, & if you want something a little different from the norm, give it a try, I think you may be pleasantly surprised I know I was.

Tsuruta Norio's "Kakashi" caught my attention because of the obscure mental association I made with the "Kakashi-Dori" festival held annually in the Kaminoyama-shi city in Yamagata-ken prefecture. I wonder if Tsuruta had this in mind when he made this film. If he releases a sequel called "Kase-Dori"... well, never mind. Besides being rather short and less-than-satisfying in its plot resolution, my primary complaint about this film is the horrid transfer on the Region 3 DVD which is quite good for the daylight scenes, but irritatingly pixelated during the low-light and night shots. And being a low-budget horror flick, this turkey has a lot of shadowy and nocturnal footage which I had a hard time following because my attention was constantly being diverted to the ever-changing patches of pixels fading in and out. Yuck. As for the movie, Yoshikawa Kaoru (Nonami Maho)is searching for her brother Tsuyoshi (Matsuoka Shunsuke), who has disappeared. A search of his apartment turns up an ambiguous and messily-scrawled letter from a girl in Kozukata-machi, a small rural village. Kaoru drives to Kozukata on the eve of their "Kakashi-matsuri" festival, where she finds the cliche "little town with a secret", along with her brother. Unless there is a longer version of the film out there, the character development is as thin as both the plot and the special effects budget. Perhaps the movie's budget was blown on bringing in HK actress Grace Ip to play the very out of place Kozukata resident who barely speaks any Japanese. She even has a Chinese surname in the movie, which does little to explain why she's there in the middle of the rural Japanese heartland. Shibasaki Kou (who reminds me of a short Esumi Makiko) plays the mysterious girl who lured Tsuyoshi to Kozukata, and does a decent job with the sparse camera time she gets. The one thing that impressed me about this movie was the excellent lighting and cinematography of the daylight scenes depicting the beauty of a small rural farming village. Other than that, let the renter beware and the buyer be laughed at.