What a huge disappointment this film turned out to be! It's just frustrating to watch as writer/director Shugo Fujii fails to capitalize on all the promise his film help up to the last third. There was something really disturbing about the torture and cruelty in this movie that instantly won me over. The evil old woman and the corpse-like teenaged girl who invade a seemingly normal household are quite freaky and used cleverly and effectively. There's a subplot about a newspaper reporter getting on the trail of the two madwomen that injects a lot of tension into the narrative. But one downright silly climax (that is filled with annoying overacting and megalomaniacal laughter) and about ten unnecessary twists (which make both Shyamalan's antics and the ending of Haute Tension look coherent in comparison) later only a distant memory of the above mentioned virtues remains. A Living Hell could and should have been a modern horror film classic but instead it turned into a disappointing mess.
Review of Iki-jigoku
