Good Movie

It starts off entertainingly with interviews and tv show segments, then the story unfolds to become really interesting, with unexpected things happening without the cues you'd expect. Towards the end it really gets amazing when it all comes together with some crazy scenes and story points. I found it to be the perfect level of not too heavy handed with the storytelling while not being ridiculously obtuse either. It also makes use of one of my favourite things: really creepy sounds.

Another very poor entry in the barrage of neo-Japanese-horror films to follow Ringu, Noroi does a bunch of things wrong. Like most of its kin, it's set to the restricting form of a mystery, which means it's a series of ever more needless, boring explanations. It relies heavily on acting hysterics, and uses too obvious scare tactics like strange baby noises and dead birds. Often, it lamely imitates Blair Witch Project, and in general it's bereft of anything like an actual surprise.

Overall Enjoyment: 30/40, Plot/Themes: 15/20, Cinematography/Direction: 15/20, Acting/Writing: 10/20 This horror found footage film doesn't really shake up the genre or turn any conventions on their head. Yet it does nail all of those genre standards pretty well, while also bringing a new story/monster entity to the table. Very well done, fun, and scary.

A nice atmospheric horror film with just enough creepy moments to sustain the long running time. The mixture of handheld documentary-style camera work and fake TV program clips work well.

Possibly my favourite movie done in this style.

It's not bad if you're in the mood for it. I like that it has a lot of bizarre mythological details, like how dead pidgeons or pidgeons flying into your window are a sign that the demon is near.

Not sure if actual Japanese documentaries are that dry and unpolished or not, but it was otherwise a decent movie. Not all that scary, but fairly interesting if you had a lot of patience.

The more I think over it, the more I liked the film's steady and mixed-footage style. The mythology slowly comes out and the people involved are unaware of what's happening until it's too late. It gets a little too Blair Witch near the end, but I suppose that's what happens with horror mockumentaries. Oh, and those faces are creepy as shit.

Besides the fact that it's constantly cockteasing the viewer with 'suspense' without ever delivering a satisfyingly scary moment, the movie is okay. It has the atmosphere of The Blair Witch Project due to it being filmed like a documentary but the supposedly creepy moments - like showing a parent and her kid and then having a dialog pop up saying that they died a few days lalter - left almost no impact. It's better than a lot of Hollywood horror though as the actors are good.

Never really manages to go from 'pretty damn creepy' to 'paralysingly scary', but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Making it a documentary filmed over multiple weeks makes it quite realistic and was a welcome change from most handheld-horror films. It spends a lot of time on backstory-elements (news reports, tv show clips) which doesn't always pay off. Still, fans of slow and less pulse-poundingly gory horror might want to give this a chance.