(This review may contain spoilers).
I went through a phase a while back when I was really interested in Japanese horror films, anime, manga, etc. I still like reading and watching many Japanese things, but not quite at the level I used to.
Watching this film reminded me of exactly why I prefer Asian horror to American. Although there were some gory moments in this, it was actually fairly tame compared to a lot of American horrors. I often think that less is more – and the truly scary things are what you don’t see.
I’ve seen reincarnation used in a lot of things and I feel that this film in particular dealt with it reasonably well. Those who were reincarnated didn’t look at all like their past selves. They were even different genders. (I’ve lost count of the amount of books that claim reincarnated characters looked exactly like their past lives. There was even one woman in a book who found a picture of a group of male soldiers and one looked exactly like her. Despite being male). So I think that was one thing that made this film better than others.
I felt the atmosphere of the film was used to good effect. The music track worked really well and the doll was really creepy. There were some things that happened out of sight of the character, but because I could see it, that made it scarier.
I was disappointed that the ending was so ambiguous, though. I prefer things to have proper endings, rather than just being left open for a sequel that’s unlikely to happen.
This film is subtitled, but I’ve found personally that that doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the film. It’s still fairly easy to follow, even being in Japanese.
Ink of Blood 