Pretty Good

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

God awful--bad acting--just watch minutes 41 to 42--otherwise a waste of time--terrible acting---

The Japanese entry in the series and yes it's all about vengeful ghosts and yes we do see, sigh, a lot of hair attacking and yes we do have a creepy ghost but no this isn't good.First of all it's a slow builder and secondly the story doesn't grow or stick together. It all starts when Jack, in his teens see his brother drowning before his eyes and there's nothing he can do. We see Jack having nightmares about that fact but it's so stupid like the cap in the sink, that was just awful. Then we move further to the fact that the grown up Jack works in Japan and is having an affair with a client's wife. When the husband needs Jack to solve a problem he asks his wife Yuri together with Jack on board of his yacht to solve the problem, but of course he intend to kill them both because he's aware of the affair. The fact that Jack's brother is being killed by water makes him afraid of going on sea, but he does, once on the yacht he's the big hero, no problems of any kind. Still it's a lot of blah blah before things go wrong but when it does it's all off-camera. Then of course the yacht breaks down and in comes the hair. Guess who, Naomi, Eiji's earlier wife. The only thing that looked creepy was her ghost. But by then it was all too late. This was for me the worst entry in season 2 and this was also the final entry. I thought a lot of Dead Calm (1989) but with a twist of a ghost. Even the ending with Jack's brother returning in the water looked stupid. No, I wont board in again to this cruise.Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

J-Horror's career can be summed up by the audience's potential fright at being confronted by the righteously malcontent spirits attempting to breach their world for ours. However, visions of decrepit, deformed stringy-haired Asian women slowly reaching out to take our lives is no longer anything haunting because of their ubiquity in the early 2000's. Therefore, it'll have to take a memorable narrative twist, or unique emotional characterizations to be affected by their work. Neither are found in this exercise because of the director's erratic tendency to play temporal puppetmaster whenever he sees fit. The lack of faith I placed on the director's control of what is dream/what is reality led my mind astray and distracted me from the strengths of the singular setting. You get bits and pieces of the three main characters lives...but nothing sincere enough to create a lasting impression. Also, I found Ryo Ishibashi's acting to be cheap and second-rate though his character's breakdown is less involving and more two-dimensional than the other two leads. The film-making and the eerie green colors reflecting the malevolent spirit is fine...but the storytelling's too shoddy and incomplete to matter. An addition of western/genre plot reveals would have added more pleasure to this experience.

I was pretty disappointed in the adaptation which is wholly unlike the story that is in the Dark Water collection. I wasn't asking for a faithful adaptation, it just was not what I was expecting. Also, I wasn't too terribly fond of Daniel Gillies' performance, but the Japanese cast were very good (yay for Ishibashi Ryo!) I give the film an eight simply because Tsuruta-san knows how to work the ghost angle and the Naomi stuff is really good. She's just enough of Yamamura Sadako to bring a smile to a knowing fan's face and is chilling enough to leave an impression on a casual viewer. The CGI enhancements were subtle and effective...the first time I think I've ever been able to say that about supplemental digital effects...and the practical make-up was well-done.Not a bad entry in the series, but I think it should have aired earlier in the run.