In my opinion if you loved Director Kôji Shiraishi's film Noroi, then you will absolutely love this film. It is done in the same mockumentary style as Noroi. I want to say the most similar US film to date to Occult/Okaruto is The Last Exorcism, but to me, this was a much more rewarding film. Shiraishi bravely manages to intertwine so many subjects and themes in this film: UFOs, the supernatural, ghosts, paranormal voices, seemingly random acts of violence and terrorism, and much more.
Part of what I loved about Noroi was following all the clues and tying together all the fake and real history right along with the film's faux dockumentary filmmakers. It just works really well within the mockumentary medium. This movie paces much more nicely toward a final climax, I feel much better than Noroi did too. I had a real hard time finding this film subtitled. I really hope it gets a proper US release, and I really want American filmmakers to pay attention!!
Spoiler: I will just run through the introduction to this movie, because its the "slowest" part of the film. The film focuses on a documentary crew interviewing survivors and witnesses of a stabbing incident at a famous national mountain park area. The stabbing happened on a bridge, where the "crazed" man kills two people and carves an odd symbol on a third man. Most of the film unravels as we follow this third Man/survivor as he undergoes changes from the stabbing incident. Unravels is exactly what this film does, as one clue after another leads to stranger and more frightening consequences. The acting is great, the main character of this film/the man who survived the stabbing incident, is so great at being this type of regular man who hides a secret greater plan. I feel like that could have easily broken this film, if that character was at any point too unbelievable/overacted/etc, but no, he remains so seemingly dismissive as a pretend ordinary joe but yet... I don't want to spoil any more, but I really appreciated that character.
This film is definitely not without flaws, but all of them can be easily forgiven. The greatest and most obvious weakness would be it's special effects budget.
Do whatever you can to watch this film.
Part of what I loved about Noroi was following all the clues and tying together all the fake and real history right along with the film's faux dockumentary filmmakers. It just works really well within the mockumentary medium. This movie paces much more nicely toward a final climax, I feel much better than Noroi did too. I had a real hard time finding this film subtitled. I really hope it gets a proper US release, and I really want American filmmakers to pay attention!!
Spoiler: I will just run through the introduction to this movie, because its the "slowest" part of the film. The film focuses on a documentary crew interviewing survivors and witnesses of a stabbing incident at a famous national mountain park area. The stabbing happened on a bridge, where the "crazed" man kills two people and carves an odd symbol on a third man. Most of the film unravels as we follow this third Man/survivor as he undergoes changes from the stabbing incident. Unravels is exactly what this film does, as one clue after another leads to stranger and more frightening consequences. The acting is great, the main character of this film/the man who survived the stabbing incident, is so great at being this type of regular man who hides a secret greater plan. I feel like that could have easily broken this film, if that character was at any point too unbelievable/overacted/etc, but no, he remains so seemingly dismissive as a pretend ordinary joe but yet... I don't want to spoil any more, but I really appreciated that character.
This film is definitely not without flaws, but all of them can be easily forgiven. The greatest and most obvious weakness would be it's special effects budget.
Do whatever you can to watch this film.