Goliath1357's Weekend Movie Guide

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Genre:  Suspense,  Mystery, Horror, Psychological, Supernatural            Year: 2005

Synopsis: A paranormal expert disappears during the making a documentary investigating various unusual occurrences around Japan. He slowly begins to realize that all the odd events are actually connected, stemming from something far more dangerous than he ever imagined.

Noroi is a faux documentary/found footage-style horror film. Unlike 90% of Asian horror movies, it isn’t about about ghosts. The movie was very well paced and quite suspenseful. I never knew what was going to happen next. I also loved how footage from TV shows and specials were included, making the documentary footage seem much more realistic.

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Genre:  Horror         Year:  2005

Synopsis: Zoo is a horror anthology featuring five stories by five different directors. The stories are as follows: 

Kazari and Yoko- a woman with identical twin daughters shows extreme favoritism by treating one like a princess and the other like a dog. 
Seven Rooms- a girl and her younger brother are imprisoned in a small room connected to six other rooms via a small gutter. The brother uses the gutter to talk to the other trapped women and learns that their captor kills his victims after 6 days. 
So Far- a boy is at home waiting for his parents to return when he hears about a fatal car accident nearby. His parents return but they are unaware of each other’s presence. 
When the Sun Shines- an animated story about a man and an android he created. 
Zoo- a man kills a woman and returns everyday to take pictures of her  body.  


Horror anthologies tend to be a mixed bag in terms of enjoyable and quality, but I was pleasantly surprised by Zoo. Not all the stories are great but they are all interesting. My favorite story was Seven Rooms. I actually think it would have worked as a complete film on it’s own.

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Genre:  Mystery, Horror   Year: 2004

Synopsis: A woman named Yumi goes to the funeral of a former high school friend where she runs into several other former classmates. A short time after the funeral, her friend named Yoko receives a voicemail of her own voice from a few days in the future. The friend laughs it off but later dies at the same time as the voicemail message. After that, Yumi’s friends begin dying off one by one after receiving the strange missed calls.


I first watched the American version of One Missed Call and I completely hated it - most of the time (not always), American remakes of Asian films turn out to be pretty horrible. When I finally got around to watching the original I was pleasantly surprised how good it was. It was creepy, interesting and very well paced (I always find pacing to be an issue in Asian horror films).