Customer Reviews

Kaidan

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Certain familiar elements have plagued Japanese-horror the past few years, formulaic approaches, some cheap scares, and the usual haunting music. KAIDAN-Ghost Story (2007) is however a breath of fresh air in the genre of J-horror; the film is a homage to classic romantic ghost stories. The film is directed by Hideo Nakata, the same director responsible for "Ringu" and "Dark Water". Forget cursed objects, haunted technology and long-haired ghosts, the film while not as engaging as Kobayashi's 1960`s classic "Kwaidan" is a welcome change for those viewers very familiar with modern J-horror such as "Ju-On", "Ringu" and "Kairo". Lionsgate entertainment has invested in this Japanese horror film and thankfully they are releasing the region-1 release in June.

250 years ago, Soetsu, a kindly moneylender is murdered by a samurai named Fukami and his lifeless body disposed of in the Kasanegafuchi (Kasane's plunge), the pool of water that snakes around and legend has it that those who sink in the water will never surface again. Some 25 years later, in a chance encounter; Fukami's son, Shinkichi (Kikunosuke Onoe) meets a wealthy and beauteous if older woman named Oshiga (Hitomi Kuroki) who is also the daughter of Soetsu. Shinkichi becomes smitten by Oshiga and she returns his feelings. The two begin to live together but strange things begin to occur. Then one day, after a lover's quarrel, Oshiga had fallen ill and due to the stress of taking care of his loved one, Shinkichi develops an attraction to a comely young woman named Oshisa. On the night of Oshiga's demise, she leaves a note for Shinkichi " If you ever re-marry, I will haunt your new wife to the grave..."
Shinkichi has doomed any woman who dares to fall in love with him.

KAIDAN is a well constructed ghost story with some "borrowed" elements from Kwaidan's "Woman of the Snow" and "Black Hair". The film is about slow-build ups and restrained suspense; and to be honest is quite successful in what it set out to do. The thing I liked about the film is that it doesn't rely on cheap scares and the film's script is more a period piece that avoids the usual formulas set with haunted technological devices or objects, and while there is a ghost in this film, the reasons behind the haunting is quite credible. No, if you are looking for images on a mirror, or shadowy figures floating around, then you came to the wrong film. While it does have scenes with minor use of CGI and extreme spooky close-ups, the film feels like an old-fashioned horror film reminiscent of "Kwaidan" and "Onibaba". How creepy can a staring baby be? Very much so.

The film is structured as a character-driven melodrama with elements of karma and existential fatalism. Shinkichi is viewed as an attractive young man, no wonder so many beauteous women become smitten by him. In his younger days, he also easily becomes attracted to women and the film delves into the ironic fact that Shinkichi should reconsider remarrying as he undoubtedly would bring ruin to any woman who would love him. The film presents the terror of actually falling in love again and all the film's twists and turns are effective enough to keep me interested. It creates fear and terror in its systematic approach. We get to explore some bits of Japanese folklore and one very effective device this film has is the feeling of dread--you will definitely feel that the film will only get worst before if it EVER does get better; and that feeling is quite a delight if you ask me.

There is also an abundance of cuts in the film that symbolizes ruination. The old adage; "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" would come to mind and will serve as the film's most effective selling point. While I was pleasantly surprised with its old-fashioned horror elements, the film is not perfect, it did have its share of flaws. Some ideas were presented but weren't given closure as with Shinkichi and Orui's baby. Osono, Oshiga's sister, is also underdeveloped; you see her in the first act and her "chance" second meeting with Shinkichi felt a little too convenient. Shinkichi's father-in-law's mistress, Oshizu seemed like a simple plot device to get the film to its intriguing last act.

Regardless of its faults, "KAIDAN" is a very effective piece of Japanese horror. It is an old-school type of horror film that will make you absorb its experience and the more familiar you are with ritualistic details from Japan, the better you'll like it. The film focuses all its energy and momentum in its last 40 minutes and even displays some bloody samurai hacking and slashing. "Kaidan" is very abundant in context, and nicely presents the balance between redemption, obsession and destruction. The film is evenly paced, it outlasts most Asian Horror films and it never overstays its welcome.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! [4+ Stars]

At the very start, it is best to advise that "Kaidan" is not a typical entry in the genre that has become known as J-Horror. The expectation will be there, as director Nakata Hideo (Ring, Death Note 3: L, Change the World) is someone whose name has become almost synonymous with the genre. He is the one who took Japan's long tradition of ghostly storytelling and brought it to the world, introducing Westerners for the first time to creatures like yurei and onryo. However, after a sojourn in the Hollywood system filming the English-language Ring Two, Nakata returned to his native country and directed a beautiful tribute to the horror legends that were the foundation of his success.

"Kaidan" is a film with an impressive pedigree. Written originally in 1825 by legendary storyteller Sanyutei Encho, the "Kaidan Kasane ga Fuchi" story has been a staple of Japanese horror in various media and incarnations. It was first filmed in 1926 by equally-legendary filmmaker Mizoguchi Kenji (Ugetsu), and then several times more over the years including a 1957 version by Japan's first genre-horror director Nakagawa Nobuo. Nakata's version "Kaidan" is roughly the sixth time the Kasane ga Fuchi story has appeared on film.

While others have played with the story a bit, Nakata does a fairly direct translation of Encho's original version. In a bit of inspired genius, Nakata even has Living National Treasure Ichiryusai Teisui perform the opening monologue, a fitting homage to the stories beginning as a piece of rakugo storytelling. From there, we are treated to a classic story of inherited karma, of the sins of the father passing on to the son and daughter, of a dark swamp that hides many secrets and just some good old fashioned ghostly revenge. Encho's stories, told on the cusp of the Meiji era when Japanese audiences first encountered stories like "Romeo and Juliet," have always been tinged with a certain romantic sadness. His mix of ghostly elements with sorrowful love stories define Encho's style, and Nakata skillfully wrings every heart-wrenching and heart-stopping moment from the Kasane ga Fuchi story.

Along with realizing Encho's story, Nakata has also paid and obvious homage to director Kobayashi Masaki (Kwaidan, Samurai Rebellion) both with certain visual elements and the overall pacing. Kobayashi's films have always seemed like a keg of dynamite with a long, long fuse, where the drama slowly and patiently builds over the film's beginning and middle leading up to a massive explosive ending.

History and homages alone do not make a good film, however, and fortunately Nakata has also put a strong cast into his film. The lead role, Shinkichi, is played by famed kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke V, whose striking face was last seen in the 2006 film "The Inugami Clan." As an onnagata, one who typically plays women's roles in the all-male kabuki theater, Onoe carries himself with a certain sensitivity that helps sell the character of the cursed Shinkichi, doomed to attract women and then witness their deaths. Veteran actress Kuroki Hitomi (From Nakata film Dark Water) plays Oshiga, Shinkichi's older lover and the woman whose curse he bears. Inoue Mao, a popular junior idol and star of the live-action "Boys over Flowers" series and Kitaro movie, is beautiful and captivating as the young Ohisa who lures Shinkichi away. Seto Asuka (Death Note) drips sex appeal in her villain's role as the prostitute Oshizu. And somehow, Nakata managed to track down one of the scariest babies I have ever seen.

It is hard for me to find flaws with "Kaidan" because this is exactly what I personally love in a film. I devour the old Edo and Meiji period Japanese strange stories, I love haunting ghost stories that don't rely on cheap shocks and jumps but instead are atmospheric and "spooky" rather than scary. If I had to find fault, I would say that Nakata relies too much on CG effects in two scenes in particular, and they are a little jarring. I am a fan of CG used effectively in ghost stories, such as in the The Others, but I find that all that carefully built atmosphere and tension can be ruined by a badly placed CG snake wriggling around. Some of the characters are not as developed as well as they could be, and some plot lines seem to frizzle out rather than be resolved, but I don't mind that too much. The DVD itself is disappointing. This is a bare-boned presentation that should have supported a short documentary on the Kasane ga Fuchi story and its origins and evolution.

It would probably be better to think of "Kaidan" as a Gothic film rather than a Horror story. That better suits this kind of romance-tinged ghost story that is a class of Japanese storytelling. Nakata Hideo has filmed the story beautifully, and I personally would love to see more films made in this vein.

A won't waste your time writing hyped up fluff with words you hear for just about every other movie that gets 5 stars on here...

All I'll say is that this is a movie well worth your time to watch if your into Asian cinema. Meaning that if you don't mind watching a film that has subtitles and isn't in spoken English than you will find yourself indulged into a great story.

Kaidan is about a woman obsessed with a man so much so that she stalks him still from beyond the grave. You honestly can't help but feel pity for the main character as he tries to move on with his life only to have every good attempt taken from him by the spirit of the woman who loved him.

Their relationship starts out with good intentions. A young man falls in love with an older woman who honestly hasn't had much luck in the subject of love. She comes with a whole lot of insecurities and baggage that she brings along with her. Also on top of that is her prestigious position in the village which also made it complicated for her to find love before. So now her she is lonely without someone.

Along comes the main character who is much younger than her and far less experienced in life. He finds himself attracted to the woman but he is humble and doesn't rush to make his attempt to get her attention. After several incidents the man admits that he has has feeling for her. The woman rejects him at first but then realizes that her status shouldn't come before her own happiness because she will just continue to live the lonely life she has. So what happens they become a couple... but the woman is extremely jealous and overbearing. She doesn't know how to accept her new romance. She wants to keep the man locked in a cage away from the world so that she alone can keep him to herself. She starts snapping at anyone that questions their relationship.

The man starts noticing the woman's obsessive behavior. All of a sudden the relationship isn't as great as he thought it would be. Her obsession over him has only caused them both grief. He tries to make it work but the woman doesn't realize how needy,clingy, and desperate she has become for his love. She begins to smother the flames of their relationship and like all things that get smothered the natural reaction is to break away and find an escape. So that is what the man tries to do...and unfortunately that is where all the unfortunate events happen.

Kaiden is an excellent movie which is more suspense/drama than horror. You can either sympathize with the woman or sympathize with the man...but the man actually is very good to the woman and is faithful to her. He only begins to lose interest in her when she becomes extremely needy, and clingy. The man only makes his decisions to leave her when he starts feeling trapped. If you think this is a revenge movie it really isn't. The main character doesn't do anything worth the suffering he goes through. Although the movie starts out with a revenge plot...the main story doesn't have much in common with the concept except that one holds a grudge against the other.

KAIDAN is apparently an authentic ghost story from Japan, and the production on DVD is typical of such movies made to "keep cool" in the hot, humid summer months. Unfortunately it is named almost the same as a well known collection of ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn published originally in the nineteenth century after he had lived in Japan for some years.
The quality of the story on this DVD is not up to the standard of the classic stories. The DVD movie relies a little too much on volume of blood to shock where a little more delicate approach would have done just as well, and runs on a little too long to reach its climax. In short it is just entertainment of a popular sort that missed a chance to be a real ghost story.

In the orient, the purpose of ghost story telling is to remind those that are living to abide by their conscience and morals. I haven't seen the original movie that were made in the fifties. In this remake, there were just far too many people that got killed at the end that had nothing to do with the protagonist or the curse (like in Jun-On and the Ring saga), thus making the plot rather unconvincing! Watch the Japanese horror classics such as Kwaidan, Tales of Ugetsu, and Portrait of Hell, and you shall know what I mean.

Kaidan is in Japanese with English subtitles. I always get tentative about watching subtitled films because it's so uncertain whether the translation is adequate to express the situations of a complex drama and I tend to find subtitles distracting from the cinematography. But I was pleasantly surprised that the subtitles were more than adequate, were brief and pointed, and actually not always necessary to convey the mood and drama.

Kaidan is not a horror film. Kaidan is also not a very bloody or dramatically violent film filled with shocking effects and visual "magic" ... as so many hollywood films focus on rather than story development, but it does an above average job of telling a dramatic story about betrayal, and a man haunted by the presence of his former lover who he made a promise to stay with, and broke that promise. There are great recreations of ancient traditional Japanese villages , the sets are very well constructed as are the traditional costumes and styles , for example the Geisha women. This is a story about a curse that follows a young man as he travels trying to escape from it, he is doomed to find tragedy and death in all of his relationships with women. There is an attempt to set the stage with an opening confrontation between a lender and his customer ( A financially bankrupt Samurai ), where the Samurai becomes enraged at the lender who insists on being repaid and kills him. The son of the Samurai is apparently the young man who is cursed later in the film. It is at times touching and at times a bit chilling. Overall it's a well told story. If you are looking for ghost/horror films from Japan, there are better offerings than this movie, but still you won't disappointed if you happen to purchase this.

Great Japanese film. The story-plot is very interesting and very easy to follow. This is a great DVD to add to your video library.

If your preference is for the typical senseless, gory, slasher movie, then you will be disappointed.
Kaidan is a love story that turns into a ghost story. Very picturesqe and quality throughout.

I'm not familiar with Japanese ghost stories, but found this movie to be very fascinating. There were few times during the movie where I felt the story could be tightened up (I wasn't sure if I was missing something due to cultural differences) to make it flow a bit better, but overall it was very compelling.

This film was a great introduction to this genre.

just.plain.boring, not what i was expecting. Kaidan was more of a tale of obsession, then any kind of horror or haunting. It was painful to sit through. It was visually beautiful, however, if one is looking for a horror movie, please search FAR from here.