Release Date: May 24, 2014 Length: 71 minutes Director: Jindo Masaaki
Main Cast:
Kana Nakada as Hitomi.... As many should know Kana is a first generation Nogi member. Hard to call her the 'heroine' but she did have the lead role. Hitomi was a high school sophomore who began a blog to talk about her being without a boyfriend, the results ended up disastrous.
The rest....
Kanon Miyahara as Mikiti.... Hitomi's best friend.... or was she?
Miki Akizuki as Miki.... Yet another friend, neither had a large amount of screen time
Yuriki Takahashi as Mado.... Hitomi's younger sister, probably aged fourteen
Toya Morita as Taishi.... Hitomi's dream guy and the pair did eventually date
Hope the cast list is correct as there's not one site that listed the names, least it was a small one. Bit of a takeoff from 'Death Note' or at least I think that was the original intention. Didn't come close to DN but least the idea was a good one, instead of people dying when you wrote their name in a book they died when their name was written on a blog. Not going to beat around the bush trying to pump this film up as it wasn't all that good, few moments here and there were but overall it seemed it would have made for a better TV movie than a cinema one.
Least Kana did well and to be honest I'd give her a 9/10 for her acting job. This and the other two Nogi 'horror' flicks that were released around the same time all had a low budget. To be honest don't think I've ever seen a film with such a low budget, most scenes were set at Hitomi's apartment with the barest of decorations and there were no special effects to speak of. But the movie was only 71 minutes long so didn't waste too much of my life and in an odd way I do enjoy movies like this. Will keep the review to this one post though there were 67 screenshots taken and guess if you're a Nogi fan then perhaps it'd be a movie you'd be slightly interested in.
That's Kana above and she has the lead role as Hitomi in the film. She's a seventeen year old girl in her second year of high school and according to Hitomi she's quite a geek. She's petrified of boys her age and had never been on a date let along have a boyfriend. She's into computers and one night on a whim decided to start her own blog which she named 'Secret Fantasy Blog'. There she gushed a bit about a boy named Taishi who she's had a crush on for a while but had never spoken a word to him. Hitomi didn't expect any responses but was thinking of the blog as a sort of diary.
At the very top is naturally a beaten person, that scene of a girl getting murdered opened the movie and will explain about the dead bodies(!) as we go on. Back to Hitomi and to her surprise the following day she received a comment about her post. It was from a user named Tanaka who told her to hang in there and said to work harder to somehow get close to Taishi. Soon Tanaka became her biggest fan and perhaps only one as I didn't recall seeing anyone else make any comments. With a supporter behind her Hitomi began to do more posts and explain a bit more about herself which will turn out to be a mistake. But for now Hitomi was so happy having someone who would 'listen' to her, she wasn't leery of Tanaka yet but should have been as that person seemed to know too many details about her life, ones that Hitomi had never written on her blog.
Shortly after Hitomi began her new blog she was scrolling around looking for some different info and stumbled across a very strange site. It was called 'Death Blog', the title of the movie and what an eerie blog it was. It had been started by this girl who went by the name of A-ko, not her real name, and it described events that were about another girl named K-ko. There were many pics on the site and what stood out to Hitomi is that after the pics were posted something happened to that person which was usually their death! What was not explained too fully was it A-ko or K-ko who were responsible for the deaths. That site shook up Hitomi but not enough where she stopped visiting it, guess that blog could be considered the takeoff from 'Death Note' as tragedy struck a person when their name was written.
Right above is Hitomi's younger sister Nado. She's 2-3 years younger and was a bit too annoying to Hitomi at times but she does think the world of her sister, you'll be seeing Nado in many screenshots. Who you won't see are their parents and they were never mentioned once in the film which was a bit mysterious. Also mysterious is what happened a few days after Hitomi began the blog as her heartthrob Taishi asked her out, that stunned her to no end but he thought she was quite a cute girl. Will have to say Taishi was on the money with that observation as Kana did look cuter than I can ever remember her looking. Stunned too about her having a boyfriend were Hitomi's friends Mikiti, Saorin and Miki. You'll be seeing them in quite a few screenshots but won't talk about them all that much as their roles weren't too large or important.
So Hitomi and Taishi began to date and have to say I've never seen a more boring couple. They never seemed to do activities such as go to the movies or to eat out nor did they have any interesting conversations but we seldom saw much of them on their dates. So in a way Hitomi was in seventh heaven but also quite nervous at having a boyfriend. She did some posting about her current 'good times' and at how Taishi had out of nowhere asked her out. Of course Tanaka was there with comments and the amount of them began increasing which finally started to make Hitomi a bit uncomfortable. Here's where Hitomi began to make some mistakes with what she was posting but at the time she didn't think anything of it.
What Hitomi was doing was putting the first initial of someone's name in a post, of course why should she think it would lead to tragedy? Taishi had a friend named Yoshida, shortly after Hitomi mentioned Y in a post that boy was attacked. He survived but was in a coma, she also mentioned a ramen shop where they went on a date. Right after that post the owner was beaten to death and all of the beatings will be by a baseball bat. And to top it off one of Hitomi's friend's house burned down after she was named in a post but just by her initial S. That girl survived but now Hitomi was getting a bit creeped out by the events, was she to blame?
Nado was on her school's softball team and often carried a bat around with her. Hitomi was becoming so paranoid about the attacks she even was suspecting her sister of being the culprit but of course there's no way that could be true. Seemed like it happened over night but Hitomi had become such a 'lunatic' as her appearance started to go downhill and she wouldn't even talk to her friends. Her best one Mikiti had suggested to stop posting on the blog which Hitomi actually did for a few days. But a blogger can't stop just like that(and I know!) so she began posting again, of course who should be there with comments but Tanaka and finally Hitomi realized that the person was behind the attacks and were they actually Hitomi's stalker?
One thing that never went deep enough were the strange happenings around Hitomi's house. After the attacks began the lights in her house would go on/off plus a door would open or close along with a few other mild incidents but it never went further than that, were there spirits in her house? In her current state Hitomi couldn't think clearly and took everything the wrong way. Such as the time she saw her best friend Mikiti talking with Taishi, it was an innocent conversation as he was just curious what was happening to his girlfriend. But Hitomi didn't realize that's what took place so that night she posted on her blog how M was stealing her boyfriend. But we know what happens when Hitomi writes an initial on her blog, the following day who should be attacked by the person with a baseball than Mikiti who is the fourth victim.
Final segment for this seventy minute film. As I write this up it wasn't as bad as I originally thought but the ending definitely brought the film down. Tanaka ended up being a young blonde haired guy who had been arrested after the attack on Mikiti, Hitomi saw the news on TV and with him locked up are her troubles at an end? You would think so but Hitomi checked her blog out once again, to her surprise there was a new message from Tanaka?! But not just a message as there was a live video playing and the person with the phone camera was following her sister Nado. Hitomi knew the route her sister was taking so rushed to possibly save her from this.... copycat killer?
Too late as this new Tanaka had pummeled Nado to a pulp with a bat, figures it was the only time she wasn't carrying one. So Hitomi was too late to save her sister who was DOA when Hitomi arrived. Hitomi began to blame herself for the killing but did she ever mention Nado in a blog post? Hitomi had come to the conclusion her site had also become a 'Death Blog', with her sister dead Hitomi slithered away and just sat slumped on a bridge overlooking Tokyo as the film came to it's end.
That ending was quite disappointing plus there were so many questions from me. Such as why was there no one around for the beatings when they're in the middle of Tokyo? Plus after her sister was murdered why didn't Hitomi seek out revenge or at least try to find out who this new Tanaka was or did the police somehow arrest the wrong person? Few other things weren't explained but that often happens in a horror movie.
Will give this a final rating of a 6.5/10, the ending for sure made the grade a bit lower. But it wasn't a horrible horror movie and as mentioned there's something I really enjoy about these low budget flicks. Have watched the second Nogi 2014 horror film which I thought was much better and the review for it is the next post. As is my norm did take plenty of screenshots which makes following the action a bit easier.
No comments:
Post a Comment