Having lived in Japan only six months, the English-speaking Karen (Ariel Sekiye) is having a rough go fitting in with fellow housewives in her community volunteer work — so much so, the gaijin resists attending the group’s two-day camping retreat. (True, it doesn’t help the trip is to a village protected by a fox spirit who “will punch you and drag you to hell.”)
The night of arrival, boss Akiyo Yoshihara (Eigi Kodaka, Headcrusher) and her fellow mean girls play kokkuri-san, the Asian country’s coin-on-paper version of Hasbro’s Ouija board — hence this film’s title, Ouija Japan. Folklore has it that breaking the rules brings consequences; sure as Shinola, the ladies awake to find their group thinned by one. Karen’s idea of calling for help is to run outside half-yelling, “Somebody! Somebody!”
How could this trip get any worse? For starters, that fox deity could self-install an app on everyone’s phone: a game that pits every girl for herself in a fight to the death.
That happens. And — just like Candy Crush, I assume — the more they kill, the more features they unlock. By sword, rifle, pipe and electric-powered gadget dropped in a full bathtub, Karen and the others battle it out until 15 lives are claimed. The upper-left corner of the screen — yours, not the app’s — keeps a body count so viewers don’t have to put forth that effort.
In Ouija Japan, first-time director/writer Masaya Kato (not the actor) has a premise that, while not exactly original, is plenty perfect for this genre — or for a mix of the horror and action genres, as we have here. However, it’s not well thought-out, with early scenes merely repeating information from the previous; by design, scuffle after scuffle make up the latter half, yet each feels so endless, it’s exhausting. Perhaps Kato was checked out as well, because the final shot is not only a cliché, but a cliché so clichéd, it’s used as the sign-off for all five Scary Movie entries.
There is no nice way to say this: Taken individually or collectively, the acting is awful. Kodaka overplays the villain role to twirling a nonexistent mustache; after vowing to have the metaphorical last laugh, she physically utters one. Worse, in her first credit, Sekiye has a sleepy and lifeless presence; if she had a line that didn’t begin with some unnatural variation of “Oh, um, uh,” I missed it. —Rod Lott