Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Stars: Haruhiko Katô, Kumiko Asô, Koyuki
Run Time: 1 Hour, 59 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/387TI8R
Synopsis
Some people in an office are concerned about getting a disk from Taguchi, as their deadline is tomorrow. Michi, one of the girls, gets on the bus to go pick it up from him. She lets herself into his apartment and starts searching for the disk. He’s standing there silently, and he says he’s fine. He then points her to a pile of disks. She finally finds the right one and comes back to see he’s hung himself just around the corner while she was busy.
The next day at work, they take a look at Taguchi’s disk. There’s a strange photo of Taguchi there. That evening at Michi’s house, the TV goes crazy.
Another guy, Ryosuke, plugs in a “Getting Started on the Internet” CD-ROM and installs it. He plugs in the phone line, and he’s soon on “Uranus Online,” an Internet provider. He connects and sees images of other people. “Would you like to meet a ghost?” it asks. He goes to sleep instead. The machine, all on its own, dials back in and reconnects. He wakes up and doesn’t like what he sees. He tells some people in the computer class the next day, but they aren’t impressed. He meets up with the computer tutor, Harue, who helps him with his computer problems.
Later on, Yabe gets a call for “Help” from Taguchi over the phone. He goes over to Taguchi’s apartment at night and looks around. He then goes into a room sealed with red duct tape and sees a ghost.
That evening, Ryosuke’s computer wakes up again and shows him more ghostly images. Yabe warns Michi not to go into the forbidden room. Michi then sees a woman jump off a roof. Harue explains that when the afterlife fills up, the spirits have to go somewhere. They seem to be spreading through the Internet. Meanwhile, various people are taping up doors and windows, and other people are untaping them and dying.
The menacing ghosts are getting bolder, becoming visible to Michi and Junc0. Ryosuke and Harue have a long discussion about metaphysics and becoming a ghost. Not long after, the ghosts make Harue vanish.
We see on the news that lots of people are suddenly missing all over town. The streets are deserted. Eventually, Michi and Ryosuke team up to figure it all out. They track down Harue, who shoots herself in the head.
Soon after, Ryosuke gets trapped in one of the red-tape rooms and learns whether or not ghosts are real. Not long after that, we see Tokyo in flames, because it’s the ghostly apocalypse. They get on a boat and sail away to Latin America.
Commentary
This is really slow-paced, with multiple scenes of people just standing around waiting for things. Actually, the first hour-and-a-half is excruciatingly boring, and the last act doesn’t really help that much. The scene where the guy goes to the computer lab to get tech support took longer than actually being on hold with the Indian tech support guy from Dell. On the other hand, if you’re nostalgic for twenty-year-old computer technology, this movie has a lot of it.
I’m still not sure what tied the ghosts and computers together, but maybe the director was just trying to tie two things people in 2001 were afraid of together. Actually, there are a lot of things going on in this film that I didn’t understand. It might be a language/subtitling issue, but I suspect it wasn’t.
Kevin said toward the end, “This is like being punished for something I didn’t do.” I think that just about sums up my thoughts on this one.