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J-Horror Rising: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (26th October 2024). |
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The Film
 "Vengeful ghosts returning from beyond the grave, young women with supernatural abilities, investigative narratives, a terror of technology, and an ominous aura of urban alienation and isolation mark the wave of horror and mystery films that emerged in Japan at the turn of the millennium, collectively labeled as "J-Horror". Remastered from the best available elements and packed with a host of new and archival extras, J-Horror Rising presents seven of the genre's most distinctive titles." Shikoku: As children living on the island of Shikoku, Hinako, Fumiya, and Sayori were inseparable friends with Sayori the charismatic core and the one with dreams of getting off the island and doing big things. Sayori was also, as Hinako discovered, stifled by her mother (Audition's Toshie Negishi), a Shinto priestess who used the girl as a medium for clients to speak to the dead and had plans for her daughter to succeed her in an unbroken family line. Ultimately, it is Hinako whose family leaves for Tokyo and she is hurt when Sayori does not answer any of her letters. Returning as an adult to settle affairs around the family's house on the island, Hinako (Still Walking's Yui Natsukawa) finds things largely unchanged in terms of the island's traditions and its other residents in the continuity of village life. She is shocked, however, to learn from classmate Yukari (Rhapsody in August's Tomoko Ôtakara) that Sayori died in high school, supposedly drowning in the river (although there are rumors that she conjured an evil spirit that took her away). She tries to visit Sayori's parents only to learn that her father (Cure's Ren Ôsugi) has been in the hospital for several years unable to move or speak after a mountain-climbing accident and her mother is on a pilgrimage. She also discovers that Fumiya (Michitaka Tsutsui) is working in the village office after returning from studying on the mainland, also not having attempted to make contact with her. Fumiya reveals that he and Sayori dated but it is Yukari who spills the beans that Sayori hated Hinako and burned all of her letters. When Hinako sees Sayori's apparition (Battle Royale's Chiaki Kuriyama) looming over her in her sleep, she wonders if Sayori wants to tell her something. When Fumiya sees Sayori too, the pair ponder whether her appearance has anything to do with the vandalism of all of the village's Buddha statues, the desecration of the Valley of the Gods, a ground of holy worship maintained for centuries by Sayori's family priestesses, and the claims of the local children of seeing family ghosts. Through the unpublished folklore on the island of Sayori's father, Fumiya and Hinako learn that the purpose of Sayori's mother's annual pilgrimage to the island's eighty-eight Buddhist temples is to maintain the barrier between the lands of the living and the dead; however, they also discover that for sixteen years she has been making the journey in reverse order... Isola: Multiple Personality Girl: In the immediate aftermath of the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, Yukari (Confessions' Yoshino Kimura) travels to the Kobe prefecture to volunteer in rendering aide. A psychic, Yukari feels that her ability to read the thoughts of others is more of a burden than a gift, particularly when she attempts to help an old man whose violent outbursts at her colleagues are the result of wartime PTSD and he commits suicide the next day. She finds herself mysteriously drawn to the confused voices in the head of a young schoolgirl Chiharo (Yû Kurosawa) and makes the acquaintance of a high school psychiatric counselor Hiroko Nomura (Satomi Tezuka) who reveals that Chiharo has at least thirteen personalities. Ostracized by her classmates, Chiharo is suspected of having caused the death of a classmate who seemingly drowned herself in a toilet. When one of Chiharo's personalities provides her gym coach and he strikes her and causes her to fall down the stairs, even being in the hospital with a concussion is not enough for people to not hold her responsible when the man commits suicide in public. After meeting Chiharo's cruel uncle (video game voice actor Kazuhiro Yamaji), Yokari believes that she might have found more than one of the reasons for the girl to dissassociate; however, when she discovers that the girl was also a "guinea pig" of late scientist Yayoi Takano (Love Exposure's Makiko Watanabe) who was experimenting with stimulating out-of-body experiences with her colleague Kazuhiko Manabe (Lorelei's Ken Ishiguro), Yokari starts to suspect that Chiharo's thirteenth pesonality "Isola" might be a malevolent spirit that has found a vulnerable body to occupy.  While Shikoku and Isola: Multiple Personality Girl have little in common with one another as far as their exploitation of different J-horror tropes, they do have thematic links to the J-horror trendsetter (at least for the genre in the West) Ringu, and both films served as the bottom halves of first run double bills with Ringu 2 – the more direct sequel commissioned by producer/publisher Kadokawa after the first film had been double billed with the adaptation of its literary sequel Spiral (not to be confused with Uzumaki – and Ringu 0: Birthday respectively. Shikoku has its island setting of rural superstition and a mystery surrounding a family blamed for supernatural misfortunes; and, while there is the unavoidable presence of visual frissons that recall Ringu, the first corporeal appearance of Sayori to Hinako anticipate Ju-on: The Grudge. Had she lived, Sadako might have experienced the bullying of Isola: Multiple Personality Girl's Chiharo being treated as a sort of living yurei as she sits at her desk hiding her face in her hair listening to mutterings from them about how victims must have crossed her and even someone calling her a bakemono. Chiharo does not get to unleash telekinesis on her tormentors like Sadako in Ringu 0 but she too has not control over what gets unleashed on people who pick on her and is blamed for it. They are dissimilar with one another thematically, however, as Shikoku's theme of the weight of tradition extends beyond the story to the film itself as caught between old and new styles of Japanese horror – not unlike Inugami also in this set – while Isola: Multiple Personality Girl shares with set co-featureCarved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman the use of the supernatural to address issues still taboo to discuss openly in modern Japan (mental illness and child abuse, respectively).  Inguami: When his motorcycle breaks down on the way to the village of Ikeno where he is to start a position as schoolteacher, young Akira (Love Exposure's Atsuro Watabe) accepts a ride from paper salesman Seiji (Gunhed's Eugene Haraada, son of director Masato Harada) who must stop on the way in Omine, an ancient village that is the seat of the Bonomiya family who have lived there for the past eight hundred years and whose residents observe the family's Ancestor Rites ceremony every year. Akira finds himself mysteriously attracted to spinster daughter Miki (Countdown's Yûki Amami) while Seiji has been secretly courting Miki's niece Rika (Marebito's Miyû Watase) to the displeasure of his grandmother Katsuko (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs' Keiko Awaji) who is a no-nonsense businesswoman but is not only eager to quash the rumor that Miki is Seiji's mother but also believes that Miki is the latest guardian of the Bonomiya family's wolf god that kills anyone that offends the family. The women of the Bonomiya family start having vivid nightmares which eventually spread to the villagers who are already upset by the unexplainable murder-suicide of a family who came all the way from Tokyo to commit the act. Boorish eldest Bonomiya son Takanao (voice actor Kazuhiro Yamaji) holds the family to traditions, keeping them isolated and without modern technology even as he willfully breaks his own rules with obvious contempt for his relatives. Miki confesses to Akira that she fell in love with the wrong man and had a baby that her mother (Zatoichi's Cane Sword's Shiho Fujimura) planned to give away but it was stillborn. Just as Akira and Miki are falling in love, her mother decides to pass on guardianship of the inugami gods to her. When Takanao decides to sell the cedar forests where Miki works to Seiji's grandmother, a series of bizarre misfortunes starts befalling the town and the superstitious villagers know just where to point the finger. Just like the characters of the film pushed towards modernism and pulled back by tradition, Inugami – not to be confused with the much-adapted famous murder mystery "The Inugami Curse" and director Kon Ichikawa's celebrated adaptation The Inugami Family and his own remake thirty years later with the same cast for the film's studio/publishing giant Kadokawa – is more successful as a throwback than a new J-horror; indeed, the bucolic first half's emphasis on atmosphere and character set the mood for a classic story of ancestral curses and vengeful spirits and it is at those points before the final act where the film resorts to some poor digital effects to show the curse striking down one victim and then manipulating technology that it falters. The Oedipal nature of the story suggested early on becomes more obvious with throwaway lines that are too on-the-nose – there is even a Tiresias in Mimito (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters' Kôichi Satô), although he is not blind, in fact he is a crack shot – however, once the secrets are out, the strained relationships between family members and their sense of destructive codependence becomes something more than just obstacles for the two star-crossed lovers. More interesting than any of the drama or horror are the scenes of the Bonomiya women venting over Takanao and the other men in the family – one of the women observes that women who marry into the family are seen as "ticks on the corpses of their ancestors" – and discussing their nightmares including the eldest wife whose womb was removed due to cancer recalling a dream in which all of the men in the family were looming over her dissected torso discussing her diagnosis. Where an outsider sees madness, those who believe in ghosts do not have to see one to know better than to dismiss a seemingly delusional character who does see them. The ending – which slips into monochrome for a time – seems in line with the fatalistic finales of older Japanese films but then tosses in a happy (but twisted) ending seemingly not so much to be perverse as in keeping with the target audience of mostly teenage schoolgirls.  St. John's Wort: Art student Nami (Ju-on: The Grudge's Megumi Okina) grew up in an orphanage knowing nothing about her parents but she has recurring dreams about a grand staircase and a mysterious portrait. When she learns that she has inherited the country mansion of reclusive artist Sôichi Kaizawa (The Inugami Family's Minoru Terada), her game designer ex-boyfriend Kohei (Eureka's Yôichirô Saitô) decides to accompany her to visit the house looking for inspiration for a new game called "St. John's Wort", a flower which just so happens to grow in abundance around the old house. Kohei videotapes Nami's exploration of the mansion and sends the footage to graphic designer Tôko (Labyrinth of Dreams' Reiko Matsuo) and computer technician Shin'ichi (The Great Yokai War: Guardians' Kôji Ohkura). While Nami is disturbed by a photograph of two infants that suggests she had a twin named Naomi, Tôko has been using the video footage to map out the mansion and discovers anomalies between the plan and the footage leading to a hidden study where they discover sketches of the artist's unfinished final painting "Woman with Eyes of Red" and the mummified corpse of a child that may or may not be Naomi. When a torrential storm and a fallen tree prevents them from leaving the estate, Nami and Kohei discover more disturbing truths behind the work of her late father and realize that they are not alone and their every move is being watched. Based on the sound novel "Otogiriso" – a "chose your own adventure" type video game in which the user explores a haunted mansion and is prompted with choices to advance – St. John's Wort is obviously inspired by the concurrent Capcom "survival horror game" and Kiyoshi Kurosawa film Sweet Home updated for the new millenium with a layering of perspectives including hypersaturated live action scenes, sequences in which live actors walk through two dimensional environments, fuzzy monochrome CCTV "objective" angles (which become unnerving when someone rewinds or zooms in), found footage-style videography – in which the color scheme looks most "naturalistic" – and a startling change back to live action when Nami wants to "check the footage" on Kohei's camera. While there is a lot to admire in the production design of the decrepit mansion, the appeal of following two characters from room to room picking up clues in a video game that the existence of many similar games in the Roblox universe attests does not necessarily translate to a motion picture. While Okina and Saitô might make attractive avatars to use in such a game, there is not enough characterization to make us care about them which makes it all the more gratuitous when there is a scene that stops the plot so they can talk about their relationship. The approach robs the series of revelations from the existence of twins to the dead child and beyond of a sense of momentum, more so with the cutaways to the office where Kohei's partners are able to get transmitted gigabytes of video data during a tropical storm and provide exposition (not to mention how Tôko can map out a floor plan from video footage detailed enough to detect a hidden room). The intended shocks do not resonate and the climax also falls flat, which is just as well as it is proposed as just one of the alternatives. The problem with St. John's Wort does not seem to be taking too many creative liberties but in it's fidelity to the game's format.  Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman: The slit-mouthed woman is another of Japan's urban legends that dates back to the Heian period (794 to 1185) but was resurrected in the 1970's when a disfigured woman was thought to have been responsible for a series of child stalkings. The woman, wielding scissors, confronts her victims and asks "Am I pretty?" (there are variations on what will happen depending on what answer the victim gives). In this version, the legend has become popular enough among grade school kids in a small town that the woman begins making appearances in a nearby park and abducting children. The news says that it is a woman disguised as the slit-mouthed woman but when teacher Kyôko Yamasita (The Sinking of Japan's Eriko Satô) sees one of her students Mika (Strange Circus' Rie Kuwana) taken right before her eyes by the slit-mouthed woman, she starts to investigate with the help of fellow teacher Noboru Matsuzaki (Pulse's Haruhiko Katô) whose telepathic connection to the slit-mouthed woman enables him and Kyôko to try to stop any further abductions and search for Mika since one child has already been found dead and another mutilated and in critical condition. It is not until they see the slit-mouthed woman again in the flesh that they come to understand why they might not be able to destroy her. Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman starts out well but goes downhill. The question as to whether the slit-mouthed woman is supernatural or insane is dispelled right away and none of the confrontations with her follow the urban legend as told by the children; then again, the original version of Ringu also shows a perhaps intentional disparity between the legend as told and how it is experienced by the victims. The slit-mouthed woman's origin story is rooted in the recent past and is clumsily paralleled with the troubled relationships of Mika and her mother (Chiharu Kawai) and Kyôko and her daughter. Matsuzaki's psychic connection to the slit-mouthed woman is a lazy plot device that does away with the mystery and dread this ghost should provoke, and the "evil never dies" ending is as predictable as it is insulting. The film was popular enough to spawn a sequel and a prequel, but the specificity of the legend likely was the reason there was no American remake. Just as director Kôji Shiraishi was given his first opportunity after working prolifically in Japanese television and video paranormal programs to direct a feature with the obvious Ju-on: The Grudge cash-in Ju-rei: The Uncanny, one wonders if directing Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman was rewarded with the opportunity to direct Noroi: The Curse also in this set.  Persona: The social order of a local Japanese high school is upset when a male student wearing a wooden mask enters the classroom. He refuses to engage with the taunts of the school's top bully addresses him and is only identified when the bully snatches his wallet and reveals him to be Danda, a young man who stopped coming to school a few weeks ago after being targeted by bullies. The school psychiatrist identifies the mask as a coping mechanism and advises the exasperated teacher against demanding he remove it; however, over the next few days more and more of the school's bullied show up in masks until they are impossible to tell from one another. Students Yuki (Maya Kurosu) and Mitsugu (Azumi's Yûma Ishigaki) decide to investigate, starting with the mysterious schoolwide invitation to the birthday party of Tonomura, another student who stopped attending school due to bullying. Arriving at the mysterious Building D on the outskirts of the city, they discover an orgy of mask-wearing students seemingly overseen by Tonomura who removes his mask only to reveal that it allowed him to cast his old self away without fear. Mitsugu is intrigued by Yuki only sees an excuse for recklessness and debauchery, leaving the party and following a mysterious masked child to a mask-making shop where she discovers the maker is handsome Akira (Death Note's Tatsuya Fujwara). Yuki and Mitsugu are interviewed for a youth-oriented article by muckraking journalist Yaba (Parasite Eve's Ikkei Watanabe) who believes that the mask craze is not the psychological movement proposed by Jungian psychiatrist Yuichiro Jonouchi (Cure's Ren Ôsugi) but a pop culture ploy by agent Deguchi Daizo Hiromitsu Suzuki) and fashion designer Ken Diamon (Samurai Reincarnation's Akaji Maro) whose never-unmasked model daughter Hiroko has become the venerated guru of the movement whose obsessives claim that the mysterious death of Tonomura who supposedly threw himself off a building after his mask was forcibly removed by a teacher was a suicide that makes him a martyr and react violently when Yuki suggests it might have been murder. When Tonomura's teenage model girlfriend Nakata dies during a fashion show and the police determine that her mask's painted design had been treated with a substance that became toxic under the hot lights, Detective Sugawara (Shall We Dance?'s Hirotarô Honda) is quick to accept the solution being a love triangle between Tonomura, Nakata, and Danda when his body turns up in the river with a suicide not confession. Yuki, Mitsugu, and Yaba, however, believe there is a more sinister motive, especially as tensions between the masked and the bullies spills over into the community. Yuki becomes Akira's assistant – to the jealousy of his sister Reika (Shikoku's Chiaki Kuriyama) – and grows attracted to him despite not entirely believing his claim that the Daimon model known as Toshi is just someone who looks exactly like him. When she fills in as a model for Daimon's fashion shoot, her questions regarding Hiroko make her a potential target for murder. Based on the teenage novel by Osamu Sôda, Persona is the most atypical J-horror title in the set, and it also the most muddled in terms of plotting. It starts out as a high school-set horror thriller and could have stayed like that, particularly with some imagery that anticipates the likes of Battle Royale – which would also feature Fujiwara and Kuriyama – like the courtyard standoff between the weapon-wielding bullies and the masked and touching upon themes of institutionalized school hierarchies that facilitate bullying (advised against forcibly removing Danda's mask by the school therapist and the principal who cites their duty of care to bullying victims, the teachers seem to hope that the bullies will take care of things), along with the contradictions of an individualist movement becoming a cult (when multiple students claim to be Danda to torment one of the teachers they note that their school uniforms were already attempts to make them all the same). This plot quickly gives way to the suspected manipulation through media that anticipates Sion Sono's The Suicide Club and then to a murder mystery set in the fashion world that allows for flashy montages of slow motion models set to pop music (including Atomic Kitten's cover of The Monkees' "Daydream Believer") which is where it concludes, bringing all the threads together in a not-entirely-satisfactory manner before everything seems to go back to the status quo (although a final laugh suggests that it is not a pro-bullying statement and that all of the characters have been changed by the experience).  Noroi: The Curse: For nearly ten years, Masafumi Kobayashi (Retribution's Jin Muraki) has been writing and making documentaries on the paranormal. Shortly after finishing his most recent film "Noroi: The Curse" his house burned to the ground. The body of his wife Keiko (Miyoko Hanai) was discovered among the ruins but Kobayashi remains missing to this day. The documentary, which was "deemed too disturbing for public viewing" offers insight into his disappearance and a series of deaths that preceded it. When Kobayashi answers a call from a single mother and her son, the woman tells him that she has heard strange sounds from her neighbor's house that sometimes sound like a baby crying and other times sound like something else although she knows that the reclusive woman only has a five year old boy who stares out of one of the rear windows for hours a day. When Kobayashi knocks on the neighbor's door, the woman Junko Ishii (Tomono Kuga) seems mentally-disturbed. Kobayashi is ready to write the case off until he learns that Ishii and her child moved away a few days after and the woman who called him and her child were both killed in a freak accident after that. Analysis of the audio from the video he made of the encounter reveals layered sounds that cannot be identified beyond the child crying. Lacking any furhter direction in this case, he moves onto new investigations of an actress Marika Matsumoto who became possessed while visiting a shrine with some paranormal investigators, a foil-wrapped psychic Mitsuo Hori (Ju-on: The Grudge 2's Satoru Jitsunashi) who attacks Marika and warns her to "beware of pigeons," and young Kana Yano (Dark Water's Rio Kanno) who appeared on a television show testing children with extra sensory perception who was the only one of ten to correctly draw four figures hidden from view only to then start drawing strange images before falling ill with a strange fever and vanish a few days later. The girl's parents tell Kobayashi that their daughter was accosted in the days before her disappearance more than once by Hori who in his agitated mental state claims that the girl has been eaten by the "ectoplasmic worms" that he has been trying to protect himself from with his foil armor. Given a piece of paper on which the girl might have written "help" on, Hori in a trance draws a map that lead Kobayashi to the apartment of another recluse Shin'ichi Ôsawa (Takashi Kakizawa) who vanishes before Kobayashi can visit him but whose neighbor tells him that the young man was quite normal before he started fighting with his neighbor about the noise her baby was making which he identifies as Junko Ishii. When Marika reports hearing strange sounds from the apartment above her and starts sleepwalking and tying string and rope into loops that resemble some of Kana's drawings, Kobayashi starts to believe that all of these occurrences are somehow linked. As more people however tangentially-linked to those who have disappeared start inexplicably killing themselves or others, the only other leads he has are the world "Kagutaba" heard in the video of Marika's possession and uttered by Hori during one of his trances and a fishing village in Nagano submerged during the construction of a dam. Taking a cue from the found footage genre and paranoraml investigation shows, Noroi: The Curse is an interesting twist not only on the folkloric elements of earlier Japanese horror and the more modern J-horror elements of creepy children and mad women in more urban settings. Whereas some of the film's contemporaries used technology as a means of viral transmission of terror, here Kobayashi's film, television broadcasts, and amateur video are a means of linking disparate story threads together somewhat analogous to the structure of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu". While the film does have a few disturbing images, it is not really a "scary" film (the score more than apes Ennio Morricone's theme for John Carpenter's The Thing it is easy to believe the track was simply left in from a temp track so much is it part of the film's fabric of creeping dread). Rather than petrifying the audience, the film compels the viewer along with the protagonist to seek out the links between these characters as some force either deliberately targets the psychically-receptive or marked for death because they cannot help but pick up on traces of the entity's presence. Although working on a budget, director Shiraishi and co-writer Naoyuki Yokota (Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman) – the set's truest J-horror specialists – manage to convey how an evil associated with the country's most ancient traditions can re-emerge and radiate outwards into a modernity usually made up of yūrei and their grudges (whose wrongful deaths are usually the result of child abuse and/or domestic violence or even side effects of ruthless capitalism). The atmosphere of the fishing town adjacent to the submerged village is realized in a wonderfully spare manner with the presence (and then absence) of dogs, traditional ornamentation outside the houses that look like decoration but are actually guardian talismans, and villagers who one would expect to be unfriendly to strangers – particularly ones with video cameras – even if they were not already afraid. The prolific Shiraishi started at the turn of the millennium and has continued to work in both theatrical and AV (direct-to-video) horror including some others that ape the paranormal investigation documentary format with his most recent work this year in the theatrical haunted house film Sayuri. 
Video
Shikoku went direct-to-DVD in the U.S. and U.K. from Ventura Distribution in virtually-identical editions – the latter being a PAL-conversion of the NTSC video master – in which some noise reduction rendered the imagery a bit soft and smeary. We have no specific information about the transfers apart from them being high definition masters provided by Kadokawa – the studio that produced and distributed them as well as having published some of the source novels – but Arrow Video's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray reveals what appeared to be an excessively-grainy film was an effect of the atmospheric conditions of the locations with many scenes swimming in fog and dew exacerbated by backlighting by both the sun and lighting instruments. The young actors are given relatively "glamorous" treatment by the lighting while textures of aging and decay make themselves known in the older cast members and the textures of the locations where one half expects a yurei to emerge out of a shadowy patch of black mold on a wall.  Isola: Multiple Personality Girl went direct-to-DVD in the U.S. and U.K.. We have not seen those transfers but Arrow's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is comparable to the more "theatrical" features in the set apart from Shikoku compared to those that use digital video for effect. The slicker image better suits the story's emphasis on its female characters, particularly Chiharo whose face changes with the emergence of each of her personalities, sometimes radically and sometimes by way of a little make-up. The superior detail also suits the storm-damaged locations which give the modern settings a makeshift Gothic feel to suit the supernatural mayhem.  Inguami – which went went direct-to-DVD in the U.S. and U.K. from Ventura Distribution (and then popped up again stateside without fanfare as part of BCI's Kadokawa Horror Collection) – is the best-looking film both cinematographically and in terms of its transfer via Arrow's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray that reveals vivid greenery and the contrasting browns of earth and paper-making pulp water and an attention to detail in the Bonomiya household's traditional architecture and decoration in all of its believably time-weathered decay. Some poor CGI stands out but that was likely always the case with the film theatrically while the NTSC video master artifacts and softness might have helped it blend in better on video and DVD.  St. John's Wort was shot on digital video, graded digitally, and transferred to film but it only appears to have been shown theatrically in Japan and possibly other Asian territories. The earliest English-friendly version of the film would turn out to be a Hong Kong import which featured an anamorphic widescreen transfer which was no doubt compromised by squeezing the film, Japanese DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 surround, and Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks onto a single-layer DVD. The U.K. DVD was a barebones NTSC-to-PAL conversion with a stereo track while the U.S. releases were more convoluted with a barebones Timeless Media release featuring only a Dolby Digital 5.1 English dub, an Art Asylum release with only Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio, and another edition from The Asylum with both English and Japanese 5.1 tracks and English subtitles that would seem to have been the best option. There are no details about the origins of the master for Arrow's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray but one assumes it must be an HD master prepared around the time of release. Given the DV origins and the heavy color grading and digital effects, there is little in the way of fine detail with close-ups fairing best when they have not had video scan line added to them. It works for the video game aesthetic and the distinction of "textures" between the formats is appreciable but the Blu-ray is probably the best the film can look as it can short of going back to the DV tapes.  Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman is another one of the slicker titles in the set, having looked a bit soft and grainy when Tartan put it out on DVD in the U.S. as part of their Asia Extreme collection (the title alone may have given British distributors pause) but the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray transfer reveals the opening sequences to have had their colors deliberately skewed towards a sepia-to-golden tint that makes the "magic hour" appearances of the slit-mouthed woman creepier in the combination of stark lighting and the absence of other life in the surroudings. Other scenes sport more naturalistic grading, with the shadowy environs of urban apartments gaining creepiness from the film's other J-horror contemporaries like Dark Water. The slit-mouthed woman's prosthetic make-up is a bit more latexy here, although that actually helps the illusion when a puppet head is substituted so she can open her mouth wide.  The most teen-oriented of the youth-targeted J-horror genre, Persona was difficult to see in the United States while it went direct-to-DVD in the U.K.. Arrow's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is, perhaps second to second to Inugami, the best-looking presentation in the set thanks to bright and sharp photography with an emphasis on invasive wide-angle close-ups of masked assailants, pretty close-ups of his glamorous young cast – Fujiwara gets as much the "glamour" treatment as his female co-stars – while the saturated color in the minimalist mask designs pops against the otherwise pristine featureless white.  Unreleased on DVD in the U.S. or the U.K., Noroi: The Curse could only be found in English-friendly form as a cheap Hong Kong import. Arrow Video's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is a mixed bag visually, but this is intentional given the mix of reasonably sharp and stable-looking digital video with some of the usual found footage video interference, television broadcasts with overlaid text – cropped to 1.85:1 from 4:3 – recordings of various quality, amateur video, and a reasonably film-like rendition of 16mm transferred to VHS for the "demon ritual" footage. Digitally-added smearing and pixellation are used to disorienting and horrific effect and it is hard to imagine a film of this construction looking better without going back to the original tapes and using modern video enhancement and upscaling tools from scratch. 
Audio
Six of the films in the set include the choice of Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or LPCM 2.0 stereo audio tracks while Persona only includes a stereo track. Coming at the time when surround tracks went from matrixed four-channel to discrete digital six-channel, all of the films use the surround field to different effects. Shokiku, Isola: Multiple Personality Girl (apart from the "out of body" sequences and some of the storm turbulence and climactiv violence) and Inugami primarily utilize the surrounds for realistic atmosphere with an acute deployment of silence while St. John's Wart uses the surrounds in a "theatrical" manner with omnipresent rain and thunder claps along the lines of what one would expect from an immersive game. Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman is very front-oriented with the rears used for some sparse ambiance and to give some depth to the words "Am I pretty?" (which, like Ringu's "Seven days" is never actually shown being spoken by the woman to her victims). Persona is a more conventional matrixed stereo mix with directional foley supporting onscreen action, some more spread to some dramatic effects given CGI visualization, and the pop-heavy soundtrack. Noroi is also very front-oriented given its faux-documentary approach for most of the running time, although it does take some liberties to goose the viewer. Optional English subtitles for all of the films are free of errors.
Extras
Apart from Persona and Inugami which might not have been released anywhere with extras, special features for the set consist of brand new ones produced for this release and archival DVD and EPK interviews and featurettes. Shikoku starts off with an audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes who provides some historical and cultural background on the island of Shikoku – shedding light on the double-meaning mentioned in the film as "four prefectures" and "land of death" – as well as the "real" versions of practices mentioned in the film including the pilgrimage to the eighty-eight temples (visiting them in reverse order is actually supposed to bring good fortune not raise the dead). He also discusses the differences between the film and the more popular examples of J-horror, and how being on the bottom half of the double bill allowed for some creative freedom. Mes also discusses the career of director Shunichi Nagasaki (Black Belt) who, like some other directors of the second half of the J-horror double bills was not a genre practitioner, as well as some background on the source novel by Masako Bando. Mes also appears onscreen in "The Aftermath" (23:53) discussing J-Horror at the turn of the millennium in which he discusses how the video rental market propped up the Japanese film industry in the late eighties and nineties when apart from films from Toho who had the monopoly on theater ownership, most films bound for theatrical release might only play for a day or a week before going to video, and how video rental reached a market untapped by the theatrical in younger and female viewership with which horror stories that evoked dread rather than sex, gore, and violence proved popular. He notes that Ringu was an attempt to theatrically replicate that success by pumping more money into it, and Spiral being released alongside it was the resurrection of a practice by publisher/producer Kadokawa who had a reputation for "synergy" in adapting their own literary properties. The release proved successful leading to the boom in J-horror and more double bills but the market quickly became oversaturated with audiences expecting more of the same with Inugami and Pulse ending up as box office failures. In spite of this, these types of films remained popular on the video market, and the second theatrical boom that started with Ju-on: The Grudge – the spin-off of the first two V-cinema installments – was brought about the American remake of The Ring which was not only successful overseas but with Japanese audiences as well, and was more modest in budgeting both its productions and its promotional campaigns. "Something in the Water" (22:54) is an interview with director Shunichi Nagasaki who discusses his early film career which started out independently when he was still in art school, his first offers to direct 35mm film productions, and how his early suspense films probably brought him notice for Shikoku. Although he is not attracted to horror films, the emotional elements of the Bando novel appealed to him and he met with her to discuss the adaptation and found her open to the differences between novels and films but also offering suggestions. He reveals that the production initially did not intend to shoot on location in Shikoku, scouting locations around Japan to mix together but then he visited the island and found that not only did a single town and the surrounding area have what he wanted but the island also had a power that Bando was able to convey in her novel. He also discusses being on the bottom half of a double bill with Ringu 2 and how he was expected to deliver something different "but not too different" from the co-feature. The disc also includes short archive interviews ported from the DVD editions with director Shunichi Nagasaki (3:47), actress Chiaki Kuriyama (2:15), and actress Yui Natsukawa (3:34) along with a look on the set (3:27) as well as the Ring 2 and Shikoku double bill theatrical trailer (1:25), two TV spots (0:18 and 0:38, respectively) and an image gallery.  Isola: Multiple Personality Girl features an audio commentary by critics and Japanese cinema experts Jasper Sharp and Amber T. who frame the film, and specifically its setting during the 1995 earthquake, as reflecting a certain Japanese cultural pessimism of that period after the economic bubble burst and in a string of other incidents. The discuss the source novel by Yûsuke Kishi whose "Black House" was adapted in Japanese and South Korean versions, as well as Kadokawa's practice of tie-ins with the books and films including a song which is why a number of J-horror films include sometimes tonally-contradictory pop and techno songs over the end credits. They also connect the target audience to the prevailing J-horror tropes including school girls with unusual abilities and males who are either antagonists or just "ghost fodder." Also included are short archive interviews with actress Yoshino Kimura (1:44) and actress Yu Kurosawa (1:32), the Ring 0 and Isola: Multiple Personality Girl double bill theatrical trailer (1:15), and an image gallery.  Inguami is accompanied by an audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Jonathan Clements who discusses director Harada's ambition with this film as the top half of the double bill. He also provides background on the various legends of the inugami – noting that they take the place of shapeshifting yokai foxes on Shikoku – and touches that may only be apparent to Japanese viewers in the dialogue (noting that although the Bonimiya family have been in Shikoku for eight hundred years and conduct their ancestor rites there, they are still considered foreigners and the inugami accusation is another form of othering strangers). Clements also provides background on the cast, noting that Amami had been part of an elite female theatrical troupe and had regularly played male leads, that Yamaji was not only a voice actor in video games but the go-to dubbing voice for actors like Willem Dafoe, Russell Crowe, Jason Statham, and Hugh Jackman, as well as a preference in the casting for primarily theater actors over stars. He is critical of some elements of the film despite his admiration including how unbelievable is the transformation of Miki, especially when the actress is only three years older than Watabe. "Dog Days" (29:51) is an English-language interview with director Harada reveals his desire to have the film released separately as it had already netted some international festival showings, and his diplomatic feelings about co-feature St. John's Wort. He also discusses the Bando novel and compares her work the Gothic tales of Karen Blixen and how Bando also had to leave her life behind in Shikoku to become a writer. He also discusses the two kanji that represent inugami, how one refers to the "dog god" and another is associated with discrimination, as well as revealing that Bando advised him against shooting the film in Shikoku (which leads to a discussion of the other locations used). He compares Amami's role to that of Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound as she transitions from spinster to beauty under the influence of love in the film, as well as sequences that he is especially proud of including the tree trunk cave set where the past and present are juxtaposed in the same shot. An image gallery is also included.  St. John's Wort is accompanied by an audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Amber T. which, despite this reviewer not being a gamer, is infectious in her enthusiasm for discussing the sound novel, its film spinoff, its influences, and the films and subsequent horror games it has influenced in conjunction with the aforementioned "Sweet Home" game. She also discusses the film's casting, including Okina who not only starred in Ju-on: The Grudge but also played the vengeful spirit in Shutter (the American remake of the Thai horror film), the way the look of the game is incorporated into the production design – as well as the use of deliberately artificial visual effects and aping the storytelling of the game to convey some of the early exposition – as well as poking fun at the liberties the film takes with regard to technology and game design while also conveying her enthusiasm for the Y2K aesthetic of the film's characters and their gaming office. Ported from the DVDs is "The Making of St. John's Wort" (21:51), an on the set introduction by actress Megumi Okina (0:44), archive interviews with actress Megumi Okina (17:39), actor Koichiro Saito (19:50), actress Reiko Matsuo (4:24), and actor Koji Okura (4:58), as well as the Inugami and St. John's Wort double bill theatrical trailer (0:22), three TV spots (0:11, 0:28 and 0:37 resoectively), as well as an image gallery.  Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman features an audio commentary by Japanese folklore expert Zack Davisson that provides a great deal of background on the urban legend of the Kuchisake-onna that started quite late in 1979 and caused a bit of a moral panic for a couple months and then subsequently became a character of parody in popular culture. Davisson notes that the slit-mouthed woman is not the spirit of a woman or yurei but a yokai of the shapeshifring fox variety and, while some versions of the myth say she will steal or kill her victims, others describe her as more of a prank-playing ghost who just wants to give them a jolt; as such, it was necessary for the film to give her a different origin story, and Davisson also discusses the taboo subjects of child abuse and mental illness in Japanese culture. "Why So Serious?" (18:40) is an interview with director Koji Shiraishi who discusses the necessity of the backstory which he added late in the scripting due to the producers shooting down his initial plans not only to make the child characters the protagonists but also to reference the Otaku murders with the slit-mouthed woman coming into a school and claiming several victims. He also justifies his decision not to downplay the film's violence against children committed by the human characters, and that he would go further with the violence if he did the film again. "Weapon of Choice" (16:36) is a video essay by Japanese horror specialist Lindsay Nelson who provides some more background on the urban legend but also uses them to discuss why the Kuchisake-onna is presented as a yurei rather than a yokai in film adaptations, including some lesser-seen bad ones. Also included are a pair of image galleries.  Although it could have used one to shed light on the novel source, Persona has no commentary track but it does feature "Confessions of a Mask" (17:12), an interview with director Takashi Komatsu who describes the film not as a horror film but a murder mystery (and indeed notes how things get muddled in the middle part and how the third act could have used some pruning at the scripting stage). He describes how it was informed by the still relevant concerns about the anonymity of the internet and bullying, the casting boon of Fujiwara and Kuriyama before Battle Royale, as well as his own influences in the film. He also reveals that during the film he had no idea about the content of the film's co-feature School Day of the Dead. The disc also includes an image gallery for the film.  Noroi: The Curse features an audio commentary by film critic Julian Singleton who, along with Lindsay Nelson in another of the disc's extras, contextualizes the film and the entire modern J-horror genre in the television and video "true ghost stories" programs of the early nineties and the efforts of producer Taka Ichise (who optioned the novel source for Ringu and searched a few years for the ideal director) to grow the genre in different directions, distribute the films internationally, as well as commissioning product with an aim towards the remake market in other territories. In addition to providing a primer on the television and AV video genres, Singleton also discusses the works of Noroi director Shiraishi and its recurring themes, as well as noting that while The Blair Witch Project was an influence on getting the film made, it was not the first Japanese found footage horror film, going back not only to the format of the aforementioned video and television series but also the 1988 film Psychic Vision: Jaganrei scripted by another of the genre's prolific contributors Chiaki Konaka (Evil Dead Trap 2). In his analysis of the film itself, he astutely describes the way in which as a "documentary" it has its cake and eats it to in regards to conveying "found footage" verisimilitude while also making use of underscore, sound effects, graphics, and cutaways. He also discusses how the film combines Japanese folklore – made up in this case – with the Lovecratian notion of the weird and uncanny. "Director's POV" (25:38) is an interview with director Shiraishi who discusses his early work in the paranormal video genre, some of the earlier stories that aspects of Noroi and other features, the "stressful" experience of working with Ichise who was the one who insisted on promoting the documentary as real and imposed changes during and after the shoot (Shiraishi wanted to go more over-the-top with the ending but Ichise wanted something that could pass for real). "The Man in the Shadows" (17:48) is an interview with producer Ichise who discusses his earlier efforts including the US/French/Japanese anthology Necronomicon: Book of the Dead which was part of effort with Toei to create V-cinema productions in America that also produced the Crying Freeman film and American Yakuza. He recalls optioning the source novel for Ringu buf finding that most of the directors he approached wanted to take the adaptation too far from the novel until he was recommended Hideo Nakata who had just directed Don't Look Up, and that the double feature showings of these films with a companion film was the idea of Toho (Spiral was supposed to be released later) and the lawsuit over the concurrent Korean adaptation. Of Noroi, he discusses how he first met Shiraishi and the first cut which ran three-and-a-half-hours, and his involvement in the creative choices. "Changing Perspective" (21:58) is a video essay by Japanese horror specialist Lindsay Nelson who discusses the found footage genre in Japan, its tradition of supernatural horror and the changes in the nineties with the "True Scary Stories" programs. In discussing Noroi, she notes that while Shiraishi might have considered it more of an Ichise film than his own, his touches are evident and she discusses the difference in tone of his subsequent, more independent films as well as what they carry over thematically and in terms of character. "Ectoplasmic Worms" (20:32) is a video essay by Japanese cinema expert Amber T. who notes more examples of pre-Blair Witch found footage in Japan including the Guinea Pig video series and the ensuing moral panic after the Otaku child killings by a man who had the videos in his possession. She also discusses the theme of cosmic horror in Shiraishi's films through their effect on the human mind over visualizations of the impossible, noting the recurrence of the "ectoplasmic worms" in subsequent Shiraishi films. The disc also includes to television programs from 2005 to promote the film starting with "How to Protect Yourself Against Curses" (13:55) in which the hosts discuss the ubiquity of curses and hexes in everyday life, the different types and how a victim might inadvertently become a victim of them, and how to protect oneself as the title states. More interesting is "Urgent Report! Pursuing the Truth about Kagutaba!!" TV special (38:11) which does not pretend the documentary within the film is real but that Kagutaba does, featuring testimony of supposed real people including a Japanese Ugandan couple, speculation from Shiraishi himself, and a pair of female hostesses visiting the town on which the film is supposedly based and attempting to question unfriendly locals. The disc also features nearly a half-and-an-hour of deleted scenes which consist primarily of cutaway news reports, including some involving reports of graffiti revealed to be similar to the drawings made by Kana, the appearance of loops in some areas where strange events have occurred, and a few devoted to an epidemic of missing dogs. From the documentary proper, we do get a longer scene of Kobayashi with Kana's parents, Kobayashi and Marika revisiting the shrine were she was possessed, and a coda sequence of Marika pondering Kobayashi's whereabouts. Rounding out the extras are a selection of trailers and TV spots and an image gallery. 
Packaging
The discs are housed in four keep cases with reversible covers in a limited edition slipcase featuring newly commissioned artwork by John Conlon, a double-sided foldout poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by John Conlon, and an seventy-nine-page illustrated collector's booklet. "Otherworldly" by Eugene Thacker provides an overview of the kaidan tradition of storytelling and how it has adapted to different eras including the modern, while in "Chasing the Ghost" Jasper Sharp attempts to nail down the genre of J-horror from other supernatural genres, distinguishing it from the kaidan tradition of the Edo period and its filmic versions and the "freak show" element of the ero guro nansensu literary movement of Showa era most popularly associated with the much-adapted author Edogawa Rampo. In "The Face of Another: Figures for the Disruption of Identity in Three J-horrors" Anton Bitel focuses on Isola – Multiple Personality Girl, Persona, and Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman "to reveal, through the mask of metaphor, the fragility and fluidity of selfhood across a culture under the conflicting pressures of nature and nurture, genetics and geography" revealing the common elements in story and character that these very different films share. In "Evil Inaka: Examining Japanese Folk Horror's Place in the Modern Age through Inugami and Shikoku" Amber T. discusses the older and newer folk horror traditions in other countries and how casual fans of J-horror primarily associate it with the modern and the technological while the two Bando-based novels instead posit that "going backwards is a more terrifying prospect than moving forwards" while "Shikoku: Shunichi Nagasaki and the Land of the Dead" by Mark Player is an appreciation of a film that was well-received in Japan at the time but slipped through the cracks internationally, overshadowed by both the more "traditional" J-horror films. "St. John's Wort: Computer Games, Cruelty and Controversy" by Jim Harper makes the argument that the film is not without its flaws but that they are not the commonly-criticized innovations of the director without which the film would have been a run-of-the-mill haunted house film. Finally, "Finding Kagutaba: Fake Urban Legends and Other Pseudo-Documentary Tropes in Noroi: The Curse" by Sarah Appleton is explanatory in itself by the title alone; however, it does serve as a companion piece to the extras on the disc in couching the film's mockumentary and found footage elements not only with the popularly cited international examples of the genre but also closer to home including Psychic Vision: Jaganrei cited elsewhere in the extras.
Overall
J-Horror Rising supplements Arrow Video's other J-Horror offerings - including films for which some of the films in this set were once double-billing co-features - expanding the viewer's knowledge of the shape of the genre and its attempts at innovation within market constraints.
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