So it was kind of obvious that at first the little girl either WAS Mitsuru's sister or was being used by (or somehow related to) her, but... In the very end, when the little girl is leaving the school and is all rude, I didn't quite get that.
Who was she supposed to be then? Ai? Still the sister? Some random girl?
She was channeling the ghost of Andrew Dice Clay's career, hence the bad attitude.
shareI saw this last night, and I'm still wondering about that. But the girl the parents were looking for and the girl they kidnapped weren't the same, were they, so was this *another* girl that died? So, who was the shadowy figure?
I'm still trying to figure this movie out. And I'm dying to know what was in the bathroom stall Mitsuru boosted himself up to see into. He had this look of abject horror on his face, and I had to change the channel before the screen jumped.
Yes, I'm that weeney!
I thought the girls were the same at first, but in the end I was left with second thoughts, and I was just too lazy to check back on it. :S But if it wasn't the girl they were looking for, why were the parents sent to the school... ?
Hmm, it's been a while, I've already forgotten if I saw what was in the stall. XD I guess if they showed it then it wasn't anything as shocking that I would remember it.
The girl they kidnapped was the girl of some rich family. However, Mitsuru's sister was using her body to communicate from the dead with her brother.
The film was designed to have you think the kidnap victim was the girl that has been missing/dead for a year, which the parents are looking for.
However, when the parents leave the medium's, you see the picture showing a much older girl. The older girl is the one that was in the bathroom stall that Mitsuru saw, quite dead. The bracelet and the blue bag are the clues. When Mitsuru looks at the corpse, you see both artifacts. Then one of the next scenes is a flashback to the breakup where she gets upset over being dumped. Again, you see the same items on her. The shadowy figure would be the ghost of the older girl seeking revenge.
The only thing that didn't make that much sense was the girl at the end telling the parents to get lost. The father's smile can probably be summed up as "geez...nice kid" sarcasm. I would guess that this could be taken as a comment on spoiled kids in private school or something, but one would think if a 7/8 year old just came out of a trance like she seemed to be in, then finding yourself not near home, etc... would be quite shocking and she'd be a little friendlier. Who knows. It was a beautiful ending up until that line.
Then again, after thinking about it, who was Ai. When they called the parents, the had a picture of the girl with her name on it. Was Ai another dead girl (though why stick around at the end?) Was Ai the older girls name and the ghost manipulated the info?
Part of my love/hate with these kinda movies. Unanswered questions are fun and annoying.
Wow, I hadn't picked up on that one fact, but it does make sense. Thanks for that! I'll have to re-watch it and pay more attention to that part.
shareThat last bit thru me and kinda knocked down the movie abit for me. And the father with the smile on his face, did he hear actually what the little gir said? Maybe it was a cultural thing that I missed?
drew
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The movie did throw a few curve balls (and didn't explain everything) but here's what I got.
There were in fact 2 ghosts: Mitsuru little sister and the girl who slit her wrists after Yasuda (?) slept with her and dropped her, also the daughter of the parents that go see the medium. I assume it was that girl's body in the bathroom stall and her spirit was responsible for most of what happened.
The actual live little, I believe, was the daughter of some rich people Mitsuru and his girlfriend kidnapped, and was just a vessel for Mitsuru's sister. If her parents were actually rich or not I'm not sure, but I'm convinced she was a living person with her body being taken over by Mitsuru's sister's ghost.
Of course I could be wrong, but that's what I got from it.
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Yes, I too agree that there was more than one ghost (the one in the stall, and Mitsuru's sister).
The whole parents-little girl thing baffles me still though, unless the medium was way off and pointing them to Mitsuru's sister instead of their own daughter?
Since obviously the kidnapped girl was not theirs... or it was simply a device to throw people off track while the parents were truly being directed to where the little girl (died, hid, or whatever).
I think the last little girl, after being relieved of the spirit of Matsuru's sister, was actually trying to warn the parents of the murderous spirit (their daughter), thinking she would probably kill them as well.
Or not.
It was confusing. I can't remember the last time I actually cried at the end of a horror movie, though.
goodnight nobody, goodnight mush.
Yeah, there was more than one ghost, and they were completely unrelated.
It would have worked better with one or the other, but because there were both the movie kinda sucked. -_-
Who is more foolish - the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?share
If there is one thing that Japanese movies are good for, it's being convoluted and hard to understand. I thought at the end, maybe, after mitsuru's sisters ghost had left the little girl, that the ghost of their daughter had taken over. I have no idea though. I will say that this was the cheesiest, and least creepy japanese horror flick I've seen. The cutting off the hand thing?? So lame. And how the hell was cutting off ONE of their hands killing them?!?!? Were they supposed to have died of fear? Just a ridiculous movie. I will agree with the people that say Tetsuji Tamayama was nice to look at though
sharehow the hell was cutting off ONE of their hands killing them?!?!? Were they supposed to have died of fear?I watched this movie last night on the Sundance channel; I was thinking the same thing when I saw that the ghost just cut off one hand. Someone can easily bleed to death if left untreated for a period of time but they don't die instantly. That part was lame. I also found how Maki (I think that was her name) died was dumb. All she did was accidently stab herself on the side, she instantly died.
LOL! I'm glad I'm not the only one that found it completely ridiculous. I caught it on the Sundance too. What a waste of my time it turned out to be.
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I agree that the movie was good. But what I got from it was that the deceased girl, Yatsuda's....plaything, I guess, wasn't even from that area, much less that school (it was an elementary school after all, and she seemed to be in high school). Still have no clue as to who that little girl is, though....
sharetimedrift, I think you got it right on. For sure there were 2 ghosts and why the girl said "Get Lost" at the end was because it was the daughter of the parents that took over her body after the little sister possessed her to get what she wanted. Very good of you to catch that. It's makes a lot more sense now.
sharei understand the missing older girl, that the parents were looking for, was the dead girl in the bathroom. She commited suicide by slitting her wrist and then sought revenge. everyone saw that ghost except mitsaru. he was being protected by his dead little sister who was inhabiting the body of the kidknapped girl. at the end of the movie when everyone is friggin' dead.... (seriously, did she hit him THAT hard with the fire extinguisher? the kidknapped girl decides to leave and runs into the parents.
here's where i'm confused. is it that the little girl is now posessed by the older dead girl? and that's why she's rude to the parents? although, if you ran away over a boy and then killed yourself because of it, wouldn't you chalk that up to a mistake and be HAPPY to see your parents again?
OR... is she just naturally a rude child and we never realized because she was always inhabited by mitsaru's little sister? so the writers were just trying to show a contrast between what was reality? i mean, the little girl's parents were never actually called so they never knew about a kidknapping. plus, the little girl was never really conscious for the kidnapping so in the end maybe they just wanted to show that she was a bratty little kid?
the whole movie made sense until that one friggin' line?!
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Another super-late response to this thread to say that YES, the ghost of the older girl (the one in the stall, whose parents are looking for her) DOES inhabit the body of the little girl at the end, through which she then flips off her parents, who are likely to get a big surprise if they search the school washroom and find the rotting corpse of their wayward daughter. The same little girl that flips them off was ALSO possessed throughout the rest of the film by the ghost of the little sister. I thought this movie made perfect sense, and I enjoyed having to work a little bit to figure it out, but the answers were DEFINITELY there. I do think the director's decision to soft-pedal the scares was in error. Every time the older ghost rolled through a background or appeared behind somebody, there was only a little rumble on the soundtrack where there should have been some big musical stinger. This film was shot on video (probably HD) and it looks it, and the director doesn't really shoot a lot of closeups for the audience to better identify with (and be fearful for) the characters, all of which drains some of the atmosphere under which moody, quiet scares can actually be effective, necessitating the need for a little boost, or shriek, on the soundtrack, but there's none of that here. Still, a modest little effort, but far from worthy of second viewing. I must admit, the emotional content was far more successful than the "horror" elements, and the relationship between the grown brother and the ghost of his little sister was extremely well-drawn for a movie of such obviously limited budget. The actress who played the little ghost girl (the sister) was undeniably cute, which only made her efforts to reconcile with her brother throughout the movie all the more sweet and heartbreaking. The director should consider trying his hand at more dramas, that is assuming he hadn't already done some on TV before taking on his first film project with PRAY.
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