First half is a nonsensical, badly acted, mediocre run of the mill Japanese haunted house thing. Second half is a nonsensical, badly acted, absolutely bananas not run of the mill Japanese haunted house thing. Stick around for the second half. It is still not very good, but it is quite entertaining.

This is such a Japanese film in many ways lol. I dunno why it worked when on the paper it shouldn't have. The things that are happening inside the house are actually horryfing and depressing, but are at times somehow presented in a weird humorous way. It completely turns when [spoiler] the grandma suddenly goes full badass [/spoiler] and it kinda feels like a horror-comedy at this point. This leads to the resolution and the background story of the whole thing, which is actually presented very heavily and deeply saddening but the film still manages to somehow end on a light note. All the swings in atmosphere and mood seem so anticlimatic but still somehow work. The director called this film "entertainment horror" - after watching, I found this description really fitting.

For the most part, it's a well done but very generic haunted house story, with a well dosed creepy atmosphere and classic but efficient ghost murders. Even seen a bit later, Sayuri's sad life story is rather common. But anyway, it is good enough to be a above the average haunted house movie. But the one originality comes from the moment only [spoiler]the big brother and grandmother[/spoiler] are left, and she turns from [spoiler]senile to her past self as a terrifying tai chi master, taking upon herself to train him to resist Sayuri[/spoiler]. This part is great and it even steps up again when she [spoiler]kidnaps Sayuri's family to offer them up for revenge[/spoiler], which is quite the unusual move in this kind of story. This added a rather novel spin to the genre. Well done.