Koji Shiraishi

In an unnamed town, deplorables gather to escape from their dark past. One particularly shy-looking guy stands out between all the crazies, when pushed even he turns into a manic serial killer. Several people are out to get him, but it's a creepy cross dresser who appears to be the most interested.

There are no heroes, no likeable characters. The film does come with a big trigger warning since one of them is a cross dresser and there's only room for negative stereotypes here. If that doesn't bother you than you can brace yourself for a bit of excessive Japanese weirdness. The technical qualities aren't quite up to par, but the comedy hit the mark for me and the runtime is pretty short. Very fun and entertaining filler.

The film isn't your typical less is more, black-haired ghost horror, instead it's a more fantastical kind of horror that offers a mix of modern and traditional Japanese horror elements. The story about an ongoing curse feels contemporary, but the characters and moody kills hark back to the classier horror of the past.

The film looks pretty nice (safe some poor CG moments), performances are solid and the mix of fantasy and horror offers a nice change of pace. I wasn't a big fan of the setting (the Japanese pop scene isn't all that interesting), but it hardly affected the film. One of Shiraishi's better films.

Tashiro is the only remaining member of the film crew. He continues the work of his predecessors and hits the jackpot when he runs into Eno, a psychic who promises he can bring back Kudo and Ichikawa. For that, Tashiro has to complete four seemingly random missions, each one trickier than the last.

The first two-thirds of the film is still pretty sane, especially if you've seen the previous parts. Then all bets are off and Shiraishi goes all out. Technically it's not great, but there's a creepy mood running throughout and the finale has some pretty wacky ideas. It's a shame the series is coming to a close when things are actually getting good, but at least it ends on a high note. This was not what I expected when I started these films, and that's a big positive.

Misa is a wrestler turned idol, but her career isn't taking off the way she hoped it would. She is scouted by a different kind of club, one where men come to be dominated. Though reluctant at first, Misa discovers she is quite attracted to this world. She becomes a dominatrix in training.

The fake documentary style is interesting but a little superfluous, kudos to Shiraishi for delivering a very warm and colorful film though. The performances are solid, Misa's journey is captivating and the film never feels exploitative. I didn't know Shiraishi had this in him, a cool film if you can handle this type of thing.

A journalist is trying to solve a case about a young girl cast in resin. This attracts the attention of the frog man, who sees in him a perfect victim. He kidnaps the journalist's daughter and uses her as bait, forcing the journalist to kidnap another girl and take her to an undisclosed location. To save his daughter, the journalist reluctantly obliges.

The found footage genre is past its prime, which does affect the first half of this film. I'm probably not the only one tired of wonky cameras and people fidgeting with tech onscreen. But once the story unfolds and the nastier dilemmas rear their head, Shiraishi has a tight lock on this film. Not his best work, but pretty dark, fun, short and to the point.

A new case presents itself to our team of paranormal investigators, but the previous story still lingers. Their last film is seen as proof that another realm exists, which is a perfect excuse to bring the crew together again for a new project. This time they're checking out the Oiwa legend, while past events are about to catch up with the TV crew once more.

The compounding lore is fun, though it doesn't change all that much about the setup of the film. It's still all about ghostly apparitions caught on crummy HD camcorders. The exorcism is pretty cool and the Oiwa legend is interesting enough, the film has no extra fat and dives right into the action, but unless you're really new to the found footage genre, there's nothing here you haven't seen before. Easy filler.

Once again, a video is submitted to the TV crew now famous for exploring the supernatural. Some girls are breaking into their old school, trying to find out if the legend of Hanako has any truth to it. They find more than they bargained for, and with a video showing a clear apparition, they turn to the crew for help.

The ghost videos are pretty familiar territory, but the setting is cool and the second half of the film is quite different from what I expected it to be. Don't go in hoping for anything too original of course, but at this point, anything that deviates from the norm is a welcome diversion. It's solid horror entertainment, short and to the point, perfect filler in other words.

On an ordinary day, the young Sayuri suddenly gets a heart attack. She is pronounced dead by the doctor, but Sayuri is conscious, and she can still walk around. She is left in the care of her family as her body slowly starts to deteriorate. When her presence becomes too hard to handle, they decide to kill Sayuri, but she manages to escape.

As with most of these films, the premise sounds pretty basic, but things do get weird real fast. The grim black and white cinematography and some oddball events in the second half really upgrade this film from a simple horror film to something with a more pronounced and memorable signature. Short and sweet.

Kudo is at it again. The latest video he received is sure to accelerate his international breakthrough. A mysterious little mountain village is the target, with an increased production budget he is able to invite a scientist, a spiritual guide, and a gravure idol with him. Already convinced the spirit world exists, Kudo sets out to find more proof.

There's a bit more back story, the film is a good 10 minutes longer than the previous ones, and it certainly helps to have seen the earlier entries in the series if you want to understand what the hell is happening. The horror elements aren't very scary though, the effects are crummy and the more ambitious concept forces them into full view. It's still fun filler, but a more cinematic approach would've done this film a lot of good.

The concept of this film series is simple. A TV crew gets sent a video by one of their fans, after which they decide to investigate. This time around we're looking at a young couple who bump into a kappa when they're going fishing. The TV crew is intrigued and together with the couple they decide to explore the place of the sighting.

Fuzzy images, jaggy camera work and some of the more gruesome folklore surrounding the kappa (apparently they rip your balls out through your rectum) are supposed to make you shiver, it just didn't quite work for me. It's still pretty decent genre fun and the short runtime is a blessing, I just liked the others better so far.

Some kids shoot footage from a mysterious woman stalking their neighborhood. They send over the video material to a documentary crew, who decide to further investigate the story. Some preliminary tests suggest the footage is untampered with, soon enough they're on the trail of the infamous legend, who is turning her attention to the crew.

You'll find the usual faux doc/found footage scares here, but the slit-mouthed woman isn't really all that scary, neither is the added lore about the amulets. Shiraishi delivers a short and fast-paced film, which is good enough if you're starved for Asian horror cinema, but it's a film that will only please the most hardened fans of the genre.

Two investigators of the paranormal get a video that shows a shivering ghost in an abandoned building. They jump on the case and go out ghost hunting themselves, with the help of the people who shot the original video. The mystery runs deeper than initially suspected, as one of the original four seeing the ghost turns out to have special powers.

Expect lots of handy cam footage, dark abandoned buildings, messy shots of ghosts and replays that don't really make things that much clearer. It's a pretty established genre by now and Shiraishi doesn't seem too pressed to do anything new with it. It's short and well-paced, it has some decent scares along the way, but beyond that it's the definition of horror filler.

Kudo receives another video from one of his fans. Sakurai is a recluse who runs into a strange girl when he's shooting a video close to the beach. Smitten by the woman he follows her home, where he discovers something quite peculiar is going on in her household. The girl turns out to be a yokai, so Sakurai calls on Kudo to help him out.

The lore here is pretty fun (snake women and UFOs), but the horror elements are too generic and it just isn't scary enough to leave a strong impression. That's nothing new of course, but at least the main series built up to an outrageous finale, this is just another very basic Yokai encounter. It's perfectly fine if you're after some decent Shiraishi horror filler, but the man can do better than this.

Kudo is back to his old antics, only now he added "super" to the name of his horror series delving into footage of supernatural phenomena sent to him by his viewers. He's tackling a video that shows a Kokkuri session (think the Japanese take on an Ouija board), where the two participants end up being haunted by the Kokkuri spirit.

This episode plays a lot like the very first three of the original series, which is somewhat of a bummer. The Kokkuri isn't that great of a demon, the hauntings are rather basic and there's no grander scheme or bigger concept behind all of it. It's still nice horror filler for those with an unquenchable thirst for Japanese suspense, but that's about it.

Shouhei Eno is a creep who has raped more than 100 women. For his latest experiment, he wants to film his crime. While successful, he isn't too happy with the resulting video. And so he sends it to a magazine, asking them to do a piece on him. He grants them an interview, in return, they have to make a more professional shoot of his latest rape.

It's a pretty bonkers plot, held together by the lead role. While hardly a sympathetic man, he is pretty interesting, giving a face (even when it's hidden behind some goofy sunglasses) to a vile, self-aggrandizing criminal. The faux doc style adds a little authenticity to the film, but it never transcends its technical and budgetary limits. Better than I expected though.

A young scholar treks up the mountain, looking for a secluded village. With a couple of local punks he discovers an ancient stone. The punks desecrate the landmark and soon after, the village is dealing with a zombie plague. The scholar is killed on his way out and returns as a ghost, helping a local taxi driver to save the remaining villagers.

So you get ghosts and zombies, with some minor demon activity at the very end. The tone of the film is very light, the effects are pretty cheap and the performances not that great. The film is short though, and it's pretty fast-paced, so all in all it's pretty amusing. Just don't go in expecting a vintage Shiraishi chiller, and you should be okay.

The segments are pretty short and are presented as found footage, recovered from TV stations and private sellers. Each video shows a supernatural or gruesome event. Shiraishi remains truthful to the setup, but maybe a bit too much, as few of the shorts have an actual build-up, nor a fitting pay-off.

It all felt a tad too cheap for my taste. I will say that there were some good ideas here for mid to feature-length projects, but as shorts that don't even cross the 5-minute mark, few, if any of the stories left a lasting impression. Shiraishi fans are sure to get something out of this one, for me it was one of his weaker efforts.