Ghost Movies

December 8, 2008

The Others

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 3:37 am
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The Others is a 2001 psychological horror film by the Spanish/Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman, and in part based on Henry James’ classic, The Turn of the Screw. In the United States, it was rated PG-13 for thematic elements and frightening moments and runs around 100 minutes.

It won eight Goya Awards including awards for Best Film and Best Director. This was the first Spanish film ever to receive the Best Film Award at the Goyas (Spain’s national film awards) with not a single word of Spanish spoken in it.

Plot

Zaid is a dik The scene is set on the island of Jersey, in the immediate aftermath of World War II . Grace Stewart is a Christian mother, who lives with her two small children in a remote country house. The children, Anne and Nicholas, have a strange disease called photosensitivity (a special feature on the DVD indicates the disease is xeroderma pigmentosum), so their lives are structured around a series of complex rules designed to protect them from inadvertent exposure to sunlight.

The new arrival of three servants at the house (an aging nanny and servant named Mrs. Bertha Mills, an elderly gardener named Mr. Edmund Tuttle, and a young mute girl named Lydia) coincides with a number of odd events, and Grace begins to fear that they are not alone. Anne draws pictures of four people — a man, a woman, a boy called Victor and a scary old woman whom she says she has seen in the house. A piano is heard from inside a locked room when no one is inside. Every time Grace enters and exits the room the door closes, but while she tries to figure out why, the door slams on her face knocking her to the floor. Grace tries hunting down the “intruders” with a shotgun but cannot find them. She scolds her daughter for nonsense about ghosts until she hears them herself. Eventually convincing herself that something unholy is in the house, she runs out in the fog to get the local priest to bless the house. Meanwhile, the servants, led by Mrs. Mills, are clearly up to something of their own. The gardener buries three gravestones under autumn leaves, and Mrs. Mills listens faithfully to Anne’s allegations against her mother.

Out in the forest, Grace loses herself in the heavy fog, but miraculously discovers her husband Charles, who she thought had been killed in the war and brings him back to the house. Charles is distant during the one day he spends in the house, and Mrs. Mills is heard telling Mr. Tuttle “I do not think he knows where he is.” Grace later sees the old woman from Anne’s drawing dressed up like her daughter. Grace says “You are not my daughter!” and attacks her. However, she finds that she has actually attacked her daughter instead. Anne refuses to be near her mother after this event, while Anne swears she saw the old woman. Mrs. Mills tells Anne that she too has seen the people but they cannot yet tell the mother because Grace will not accept what she is not ready for. Charles is stunned when Anne tells him the things her mother did to her. Charles says he must leave for the front and disappears again. After Charles leaves, Anne continues to see things, including Victor’s whole family and the old woman. Grace breaks down to Mrs. Mills, who claims that “sometimes the world of the dead gets mixed up with the world of the living”. The two women also find and examine a ‘book of the dead,’ which shows mourning portraits taken in the 19th century of recently deceased corpses.

One morning, Grace wakes to the children’s screams: all of the curtains in the house have disappeared, as Anne had said they might earlier in the movie. When the servants refuse to help look for them, Grace realizes that they are somehow involved. Hiding the children from the light, she banishes the servants from the house.

That night, Anne and Nicholas sneak out of the house to find their father, and stumble across the hidden graves. They find that the graves belong to the servants. At the same time, Grace goes to the servants’ quarters and finds a photograph from the book of the dead and is horrified to see that it is of the three servants. The servants appear and give chase to the children, who make it back into the house just as Grace emerges to hold off the servants with a shotgun. The children run upstairs where they hide, but are found by the strange old woman. Downstairs, the servants continue talking to Grace, telling her that they have to learn to live together. She begins to understand what they mean. Upstairs, Anne and Nicholas discover the old woman is acting as a medium in a séance with Victor’s parents. It is then that they learn the awful truth: the old woman is not the one who is a ghost; the ghosts are Anne, Nicholas and their mother. Grace loses her temper and supernaturally attacks the visitors. This sequence is quickly intercut with scenes from both Grace’s viewpoint and the family’s. For example, when Grace is shown shaking the table in anger, it appears in the next shot that the table is shaking on its own.

The truth is finally clear to Grace and the audience: She breaks down with the children and remembers what happened just before the arrival of their new servants; yearning for the company of her missing husband and increasingly frustrated by her children, she went insane, smothered them both with a pillow and then, realizing what she had done, shot herself. When she awoke, she assumed that God had granted her family a miracle. Grace and the children realize that Charles is also dead, but he was not aware of this fact. Mrs. Mills appears and informs Grace that they will learn to get along, and sometimes they won’t even notice the living people who inhabit their house. Outside, Victor’s family — less than happy with their haunted house — pack up and move out. From the window, Grace and her children watch as they drive away. Despite her earlier loathing of the house, referring to it as a prison, Grace ends the film with the line; “No one can make us leave this house.” and disappears with her children in her arms.

The Other Side of the Tracks

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 3:34 am
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The Other Side of the Tracks is a 2008 independent romantic fantasy film by Argentine-born writer-director A.D. Calvo, starring Brendan Fehr, Chad Lindberg, and Tania Raymonde.

Plot

Ten years after a tragic train accident killed his girlfriend, Josh finds himself haunted by disturbing visions from somewhere between the world of the living and the dead—haunting memories that keep him from moving on. His buddy, back in town for their high school reunion, tries to wake Josh from his painful past, but a mysterious young waitress offers a seductive alternative.

The Orphanage

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 3:31 am
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The Orphanage is a 2007 Spanish-language horror film and the debut feature of Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona. The film stars Belén Rueda as Laura, Fernando Cayo as Carlos, her husband, and Roger Príncep as their adopted son Simón. The plot revolves around Laura, who returns to her childhood home, an orphanage. Laura plans to turn the house into a home for disabled children, but the parents reach a problem when they realize Simón believes he has a masked friend named Tomás whom he will run away with. After an argument with Laura, Simón goes missing.

The film’s script was written by Sergio G. Sánchez in 1996 and brought to the attention of Bayona in 2004. Bayona had his long-time friend and director Guillermo del Toro help produce the film to double its budget and filming time. Bayona wanted the film to capture the feel of 1970s Spanish cinema, and cast Geraldine Chaplin and Belén Rueda, who were later praised for their roles in the film.

The film opened at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2007, and had great critical and audience reaction in its native Spain, winning seven Goya awards. On its North American release, The Orphanage received positive acclaim from English speaking critics noting the film as well directed and acted, and the lack of cheap scares. New Line Cinema bought the rights to the film to produce an American remake.

Plot

Laura (Belén Rueda) and her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) return to an orphanage where she had lived as a child. Their adopted son Simón is HIV-positive, but is unaware of both his adoption and his illness. Laura takes Simón to visit a cave near the beach, and he claims he meets a new imaginary friend there. At home, Simón draws a picture of his friend named Tomás (Oscar Casas) who wears a sack mask. A social worker named Benigna (Montserrat Carulla) appears one day and reveals to Laura that she has Simón’s old adoption file. Laura becomes angry with her intrusion and sends her away. That night, Laura finds Benigna hiding in their garden shed but Benigna escapes. Carlos and Laura phone the police who reveal there is no social worker registered as Benigna. Later, Simón tells Laura about a type of scavenger hunt game that Tomás has created which begins when someone’s treasured possession is taken and replaced with another object which provides a clue as to the whereabouts of the next clue object, and so on, eventually leading them to the location of their treasured possession. At the end they get a wish if they manage to recover their treasured possession. What is hidden during the game is replaced with Simón’s adoption file. Simón angrily reveals that his new friends told him that Laura is not his real mother and that he is going to die.

Later, at a children’s party at the Orphanage, Laura tells Simón to come and join them but he demands that he show her where Tomás’ secret “little house” that Simón goes to is situated. An argument ensues, and Laura leaves Simón upstairs. Carlos takes the children to the beach, and tells Laura to get Simón. Laura looks in the bathroom, only to be confronted by the boy in a sack mask with the name “Tomás” embroidered onto his shirt. When Laura tries to remove his mask, Tomás traps her in the bathroom. Laura escapes and frantically searches for Simón. She runs to a nearby cave by the sea and breaks her leg only to see a vague figure of a boy standing in the cave. At a medical center, the police psychologist Pilar (Mabel Rivera) talks to the parents, suggesting that Benigna may have abducted Simón. That night at home, a bedridden Laura hears unexplained banging and pounding in the walls.

Months later while driving, the couple spot Benigna pushing a baby carriage, when she is suddenly hit and killed by a speeding ambulance. Laura checks the carriage finding a doll with a sack mask resembling Tomás. Police search Benigna’s home finding films and photographs that reveal Benigna had worked at the orphanage long ago. Pilar shows Laura an old photo with her five childhood friends, including a young Benigna (Carol Suárez). Benigna had a deformed son named Tomás, whom she kept hidden and gave him a sack mask to cover his face. They learn how the five children played a trick on Tomás at the cave by stealing his mask from him. Tomás refused to leave the cave without his mask and drowned there.

Laura gets assistance from a medium named Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin) for clues to her son’s disappearance. After surveying the orphanage, the medium explains that Laura can see the dead as she is close to death herself, and suggests that the reason Simón saw ghosts was his illness. Laura later plays the scavenger hunt game, which ends with a doorknob being found, as well as five sacks full of partially-cremated human bones in the garden shed. The police conclude Benigna exacted revenge on the children for Tomás’ death. Carlos and Laura argue about leaving the orphanage but Laura insists that she needs two days alone there before joining him.

Laura takes some sedatives to become close to death. Ghost children appear and lead her to a hidden door in a storage closet that the old doorknob opens. It leads her to Tomas’ basement room where she finds Simón alive and hugs him in a blanket. The ghosts vanish while Laura finds that the blanket is empty and behind her the body of a deceased Simón lies wearing Tomás’ sack mask. She then realizes that Simón had been trapped down there by accident when some poles fell in front of the door, and the banging she had heard previously was Simón trying to escape, then falling to his death. Laura carries Simón’s body upstairs and swallows all her medication, begging to be with Simón again. Laura’s scavenger hunt wish is granted and the ghosts of the six dead children appear. Simón comes to life in Laura’s arms, and wishes Laura to stay and take care of them all forever. Alone, Carlos walks over a gravestone for both Laura and Simón. Carlos returns to the empty old bedroom finding a medallion he gave Laura. Carlos turns to the bedroom door which opens as Carlos slowly smiles.

December 7, 2008

Kairo

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 11:15 am
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Kairo is a 2001 Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The film was based on his novel of the same name, and was released in the US in 2005 as Pulse. The movie is the subject of a 2006 English language remake Pulse. This movie has a cult following.

Plot

The plot centers on ghosts invading the world of the living via the Internet. The film is a philosophical exploration into the alienation and loneliness of modern existence thanks to technology and more specifically, the Internet. Communication breakdown and isolation are the main themes of the film.

The film – which is set in Tokyo – features two parallel storylines whose surviving characters meet up towards the end.

Kudo Michi

The first storyline involves a young woman named Kudo Michi (Kumiko Aso) who works at a plant sales company. She has recently moved to the city and her main friends are her three colleagues; Sasano Junko, Toshio Yabe and Taguchi. At the start of the film, it appears Taguchi has been missing for some days working on a computer disk. Michi goes to visit his apartment and finds him physically okay, albeit distracted. When Michi’s back is turned, Taguchi hangs himself in a manner as abrupt as it is casual.

She and her colleagues ponder why Taguchi committed suicide but cannot find any answers, although there are clues on the computer disk Taguchi was working on, including an image of his apartment with Taguchi’s ghostly face reflected in a computer monitor. Yabe later receives a phone-call that seems to be of Taguchi saying “Help me”, over and over, so he goes to his deceased colleague’s apartment and sees a ghostly black image imprinted on the wall where Taguchi was hanging against. Yabe leaves but spies a door to a nearby apartment which has been taped up with bright red tape. He rips the tape off and enters, only to encounter a ghostly woman who approaches him silently while he desperately hides under a sofa.

After that encounter, Yabe becomes despondent and lethargic, hiding in his apartment and refusing to leave. Later, Michi receives a phone-call whereby Yabe intones “Help me” over and over. She goes to his apartment but Yabe is not there; there is merely a black stain on the wall. She leaves in fear.

Michi and Junko are soon alone at their workplace, with their boss having also dropped out of sight. Doors with red-tape over the edges are cropping up all over Tokyo, and Junko enters one of them, where she encounters a ghostly woman. Junko is rescued by Michi, who takes her to her apartment, but Junko is rendered lethargic and uncommunicative. When Michi’s back is briefly turned, Junko asks her “Am I just going to die like this?” Michi cheerfully responds “No, of course not,” but when she turns round, Junko has vanished, leaving just a sad black stain on the wall.

Kawashima Ryosuke

The other storyline features Kawashima Ryosuke (Haruhiko Katô), an economics student who decides to get onto the internet; he knows nothing about computers but feels compelled to join in the internet fad. He signs up to an Internet Service Provider (using dial-up, as this was before broadband became commonplace) but watches in confusion and then horror when his computer automatically connects to a series of webcam images showing lethargic and depressed looking people in darkened rooms, before showing the text “Do you want to meet a ghost?”

Ryosuke turns the computer off and the next day asks advice from a random student he finds in the computer lab. He suggest that a hacker may have been responsible. Harue Karasawa (Koyuki), a computer expert, overhears this conversation. She advises him on how to take the address of the site should it happen again. Ryosuke tries this advice the next night, when his computer dials up on its own, but he unplugs the computer in terror when he sees a webcam image of a man sitting in a chair with a plastic bag on his head and the words “Help me” scrawled repeatedly on the wall behind him.

He gets in touch with Harue again, but she does not have much of an explanation as to what is going on. One of her fellow students, Yoshizaki, does, and in fact he ties in Ryosuke’s experiences with the appearances of ghostly looking people who can be seen around campus. Yoshizaki explains his theory that the place where dead people’s souls go to is somehow filled up, and the souls (or ghosts) are spilling out and invading the physical world – somehow employing the internet to do so – and that this is behind the rash of people vanishing or losing the will to live and subsequently committing suicide.

Ending

Throughout the two storylines, Tokyo is rapidly and inexplicably being emptied of people. At one point, Michi goes to a local shop, which is empty, save for a ghostly man lurking behind the counter. Towards the start of the film, Ryosuke visits a video arcade, which is packed with other people, but when he goes there a few days later it is empty, apart from a bizarre, ghostly apparition that compels him to flee in terror.

Harue subsequently drops out of sight too, and Ryosuke ends up drifting aimlessly around an increasingly desolate Tokyo, where he meets Michi, who – having seen her colleagues and friends all either kill themselves or vanish – was driving aimlessly in the hope of finding someone, only for her car to break down.

Ryosuke and Michi team up and try to find Harue. She turns up in an abandoned factory, where she shoots herself in the head in front of Ryosuke and Michi. The latter two are compelled to drive off, but not before Ryosuke stops to obtain some fuel and ends up wandering into a room whose door was previously sealed up with red tape. There he encounters a ghost who mournfully explains that “death was eternal loneliness” and pleads “help me”.

At that point, Ryosuke seemingly loses the will to live, and Michi has to all but drag him to safety. They drive through Tokyo, which is deserted and desolate, with parts of it on fire. Along the way they encounter many scenes of an almost apocalyptic nature, such as a military plane crashing and the sky darkened by the fires raging through an empty Tokyo.

Finally, the pair make it to a ship crewed by a small group of survivors. Ryosuke is slumped against a wall in a cabin when he vanishes, leaving a black stain; Michi is left on her own with the other few survivors. The captain (Koji Yakusho) states that they are heading towards Latin America because they have received “signals” from that location, indicating that there are survivors there. This makes it clear that the whole of the planet Earth – not just Tokyo – has seen an apocalyptic de-population of humanity.

The film ends with Michi watching Ryosuke vanish and – through a voice-over narration – declaring “Now, alone with my last friend in the world, I have found happiness.”

Just Like Heaven

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 11:08 am
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Just Like Heaven is a romantic comedy film released on September 16, 2005, in the U.S. and Canada. Set in San Francisco, it stars Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, and Jon Heder. It reached #1 in the United States box office, though it earned much less than anticipated. It is based on the novel If Only It Were True (Et si c’était vrai…) by Marc Levy. I See You, a Bollywood film, has a similar storyline.

Plot

Elizabeth Masterson (Witherspoon), a young doctor whose work is her whole life, is involved in a car accident. Three months later, David Abbott (Ruffalo), a landscape architect recovering from the death of his wife, moves into her apartment.

Elizabeth appears to David at the apartment. Though seemingly a normal person, she has ghostly properties and abilities: she can suddenly appear and disappear, move through walls, and once takes over his actions. When they meet, they are both surprised, as Elizabeth is not aware yet of her condition.

For the most part, David is the only one who can see Elizabeth, leading others to believe that he is hallucinating and talking to himself. It is later revealed that one of Elizabeth’s young nieces can also sense her presence although she cannot see her.

At first, Elizabeth does not remember anything of her life, and refuses to believe that she is dead. Her memories come back gradually. Together, assisted by Zen-like psychic Darryl (Jon Heder), she and David find out who she is, what happened to her, and why they are connected.

Eventually, they find that her body is in a coma in the hospital. In accordance with her living will, she will soon be taken off life support. Elizabeth’s spirit and David, who have fallen in love, manage to prevent this just in time, and she miraculously recovers. However, she doesn’t remember anything that happened during the coma or any of the events with David, which leaves him heartbroken.

One day, Elizabeth goes up to her roof and sees David, who got in with the spare key and is finishing up the garden there. Just as he is about to leave, she asks for her key back. When their hands touch, her memory is restored, and they kiss. Before the credits roll, Darryl is shown looking at them in a crystal ball. Darryl is proud and sighs “Righteous”.

Ju-on: The Grudge

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 11:05 am
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Ju-on: The Grudge is a 2003 Japanese “J-Horror” film, written and directed by Takashi Shimizu. The film is the third entry in the Ju-on series and is the first film theatrically released (the first two entries were direct to video productions). The film was released in Japan on January 25, 2003 and has spawned several sequels and an American remake titled The Grudge which was released in 2004.

It is said in Japan that when someone dies in extreme sorrow or rage, the emotion remains and can leave a stain upon that place. Death becomes a part of that place, killing everything it touches.

Once it sees you, it never lets go.

The Haunted Mansion

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 10:42 am
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The Haunted Mansion is a 2003 fantasy film based on the ride of the same name, directed by Rob Minkoff and starring Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Jennifer Tilly, Marsha Thomason and Nathaniel Parker. It was released on November 26, 2003.

Plot

Jim and Sara Evers are proprietors of Evers and Evers Real Estate and parents of 10-year-old Michael and 13-year-old Megan. Jim is a workaholic who has not been spending time with his family, much to the disapproval of his wife. On a weekend trip in which he has promised to devote time to the family, they make a detour through the swamps of New Orleans, Louisiana to Gracey Manor, a decaying but valuable property. The owners had earlier contacted Sara with interest in selling.

Once the Evers arrive, a violent rainstorm erupts, and they are led inside by Ramsley, the creepy butler who is immediately disturbed that Sara did not come alone. The family is introduced to Master Edward Gracey, the heir of the house, and invited to stay the night as the roads have flooded. Michael and Megan are sent to one bedroom, Jim and Sara to another.

As Jim and Sara are separated, and Jim finds himself trapped in a secret passage, Michael and Megan are led by a floating blue orb into an attic room where they discover an antiquated painting that looks exactly like their mother. They encounter Ezra and Emma, a footman and maid respectively who work for the mansion and also warn the kids of impending danger. Megan and Michael discover that Emma and Ezra are actually ghosts, as is Master Gracey, and that Master Gracey thinks their mother is his lover Elizabeth returned to him from beyond the grave; years ago, she had seemingly committed suicide.

Meanwhile, Jim discovers the animated head of gypsy Madame Leota stored inside a crystal ball. Through her help, he is led to his kids and together, they follow her instructions through a ghost-populated graveyard to find a key that will help them flee the mansion. Jim, Michael, and Megan learn that there is a curse binding the souls of everyone who has died in the mansion to walk its premises until it is broken.

Jim and Megan go into a mausoleum, per Madame Leota’s instructions, and locate the key in question, only to be attacked by hundreds of zombies. They find themselves trapped in the mausoleum, but Michael overcomes his fear of spiders (which are crawling all over the outside of the crypt door) and frees his father and sister just in time. They use the key to unlock a trunk, inside of which is a letter from Elizabeth declaring that she loved Master Gracey and that she did want to marry him. It is revealed that Ramsley, also a ghost, did not like the idea of Master Gracey and Elizabeth getting married. So he wrote a different letter (which was taken as Elizabeth’s) stating that Elizabeth felt differently than she really did, and poisoned Elizabeth to prevent an interracial marriage between her and Gracey. Ramsley traps Michael and Megan in a trunk suitcase, and literally throws Jim out of the mansion, locking him outside. He confronts Sara and makes it clear that she will either proceed with the marriage (and a suicide), or that her children will die.

Jim, attempting to break back into the mansion but finding it magically sealed, sits outside in vain until the head of Madame Leota rolls up to him to encourage him to keep trying. Jim drives his BMW E65 through the wall just in time to stop the wedding and confront Gracey with the truth. When all is revealed, Ramsley becomes enraged and invokes the fires of Hell. The multiple windows of the mansion shatter as evil spirits fly around the room. Then out of the fireplace comes a giant demonic dragon. The dragon sucks Ramsley into the fireplace for his eternal punishment in Hell. Unfortunately, Sara has had enough of the poison given to her before the wedding to die. Just in time, Elizabeth’s spirit, which is actually the blue orb, moves into Sara’s body and revives her, breaking the curse and saving her life. After everything he’s put the Evers through, Master Gracey repays them by giving them the deed to the mansion. Thus all of the spirits in the mansion, including Elizabeth, Master Gracey, Ezra, and Emma ascend into the light of Heaven, their curse broken.

Jim has learned an important lesson about family, and his son and daughter have learned bravery in the face of evil. The family, now in possession of the deed to the house, head out on their vacation to the lake (with the encased head of Madame Leota in the back seat and a quartet of singing busts strapped to the back of the car singing their own version of “When the Saints Come Marching In“).

The Grudge

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 10:40 am
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The Grudge is the 2004 American remake of the Japanese film Ju-on: The Grudge. The film is the first installment in the American horror film series The Grudge. The film was released in North America on October 22, 2004 and is directed by Takashi Shimizu (director of the original series) while Stephen Susco scripted the remake. In the same tradition as the original series, the plot of the film is told through a non-linear sequence of events and includes several intersecting subplots.

The film is rated PG-13 by the MPAA and 15 by the BBFC for its content of mature thematic material, disturbing images/terror/violence, and some sensuality. The film has also spawned several sequels including The Grudge 2 (which was released on October 13, 2006) and The Grudge 3 (which is currently in pre-production for a 2009 release).

Synopsis

The Grudge describes a curse that is born when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage or extreme sorrow. Those who encounter this murderous supernatural force die and the curse is reborn repeatedly, passed from victim to victim in an endless, growing chain of horror. The following events are explained in their actual order (which differs from the order shown on film).

The Saeki Murders and Peter Kirk

(Note: These events happen three years prior to the events in the film and several events portrayed in this section are shown in the director’s cut, but parts of it are in the regular version.)

Kayako Saeki (Takako Fuji), a young Japanese woman, is unhappily married to Takeo Saeki (Takashi Matsuyama).

She becomes obsessed with Peter Kirk (Bill Pullman), an American college professor working in Tokyo. She writes about her feelings for him in a diary. She follows him and sends him love letters. One night, Kayako returns home and enters her bedroom upstairs. She finds her husband reading her diary. In a rage, Takeo attacks Kayako, shoving her to the floor, banging the walls while yelling and screaming. Kayako sprains her ankle and crawls down the stairs, but before she can escape, Takeo catches her and snaps her neck.

Takeo looks up to see their eight-year-old son, Toshio Saeki (Yuya Ozeki), at the top of the stairs; a witness to the murder. Takeo drags Toshio to the bathroom and drowns him in the bathtub. Takeo also slits Toshio’s cat’s throat and tosses the carcass on the floor of the bathroom. He wraps Kayako’s body in plastic trash bags and places it far in the corner of the attic. He puts Toshio’s body in his bedroom closet and tapes it shut with Duct tape, and then hangs himself.

In order to find out why Kayako is sending him the letters, Peter Kirk comes to the Saeki residence the next day with one of Kayako’s love letters in hand. He sees Toshio’s hands hanging out of the bathroom window, bruised and scratched. Peter goes inside and decides to stay with the boy until the parents return. Peter looks through the rest of the house, entering Takeo and Kayako’s bedroom in the back where he finds several family photos in a pile on the floor. Kayako’s face has been torn out of every one of them. He finds Kayako’s diary and thumbs through it, learning more about Kayako’s obsession with him.

The closet door catches his eye and, upon inspecting it, he finds the cut-outs of Kayako’s face nailed all over the door and smeared with blood. Kayako’s lifeless corpse falls out from the attic and lands on the closet shelf. Peter runs into the hall and hears thumping noises coming from Toshio’s room and finds Takeo hanging from a noose of Kayako’s hair. The next morning, in front of his wife, Maria (Rosa Blasi), he commits suicide by jumping off the balcony just outside his apartment bedroom. This scene is shown on the beginning of the movie.

The Williams Family

Matthew Williams (William Mapother), his wife, Jennifer (Clea DuVall), and ailing mother, Emma (Grace Zabriskie) move to Tokyo as a result of Matthew’s promotion. His sister, Susan (KaDee Strickland), also lives in Tokyo and helps them find a home. Matthew and Jennifer decide on a suburban house despite Emma’s strange reactions to the place. Emma’s health and condition deteriorate rapidly following the move. Jennifer becomes disenchanted with life in Japan as she cannot sleep during (what she assumes to be) Emma’s restless stirrings, cannot speak the language, and has gotten lost once on a walk. Matthew assures her things will improve and that if they don’t, the family will return to the United States.

Jennifer falls asleep on a couch in the living room, after having made and partially eaten a bowl of ramen, which she left on the table. The sound of the bowl hitting the floor wakes her. She scolds Emma for making the mess, but then sees a trail of wet child’s footprints leading out to the hall. She sees a cat on the landing of the stairs and sees a pair of white arms gently pick it up. She continues upstairs and enters her bedroom (Toshio’s former bedroom). The door closes behind her.

Matthew returns from work and finds the house in complete disarray with trash strewn everywhere. He calls out to his wife, who doesn’t answer. He finally finds her on their bed, unable to move or speak and struggling to breathe. Before he can call an ambulance, he is startled by the sudden appearance of a young boy making cat sounds. He backs up against the closet as Toshio appears suddenly over his head.

Later, Susan is preparing to leave the office after becoming concerned from not being able to reach Matthew. She hears moaning sounds in the hallway, so she quickly exits to the stairs when the lights start to flicker and shatter. Susan looks over the railing to see Kayako’s ghost crawling up the stairs. Susan flees to the security office, seeking help. Susan watches the monitor as the security guard investigates. Kayako’s black ghost materializes in the hallway and walks toward the security camera, and Susan runs.

Susan takes a taxi cab back to her apartment. She enters an elevator, and it ascends several floors. Susan does not notice, however, that Toshio is standing outside each set of elevator doors she passes. Susan makes it safely inside when her phone rings. It is Matthew claiming to have forgotten her apartment number and asking to be buzzed inside. She tells him where to find her and activates the buzzer with the phone. Before she can hang up, the doorbell rings immediately. Thinking Matthew couldn’t possibly have had time to arrive, she checks the peephole of the door. It is Matthew, so Susan thinks he’s been pranking her. She angrily throws open the door, but no one is there. The death rattle sounds loudly through the phone in Susan’s hand. She drops and breaks the phone, but the sound still comes. Cowering in bed, Susan reaches beneath the covers and pulls out the rabbit’s foot phone charm from her phone and drops it in fear. A lump billows from underneath the covers and moves toward Susan. She lifts the sheets and finds herself staring into the face of Kayako’s ghost. It yanks her under the covers, and the sheets fall flat upon the now empty bed.

The Social Workers

(The events in this section are shown throughout the film, though they take place in time shortly after the Williams’ move in to the house.)

Yoko (Yoko Maki) is a girl whose work is to take care of Emma and clean the house. When picking up trash on the floor and stairs, she hears someone walking around up in the attic. Following the noise, Yoko enters a closet in the bedroom and sees a small door in the ceiling, which leads to the attic. Using a lighter, Yoko sticks her head up through the door and slowly turns around, looking for the source of the sound. She eventually comes face to face with the ghost of Kayako Saeki, who attacks her, dragging her up into the closet.

Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is then called in to work at the house and care for Emma after Yoko disappears. While working, Karen finds a room that’s been taped shut with cat-like noises coming from it. When she rips off the tape and opens the door, she finds a little boy (Toshio). The boy refuses to come downstairs so she asks him for his name. “Toshio,” he says, in a toneless, eerie voice. Emma begins stirring and muttering in the other room. As Karen calms her, a dark shadow of hair emerges from a corner of the room, terrifying Emma. Karen looks up to see Kayako reaching for Emma. Kayako’s hair, which was covering her face, flies back to reveal the whites of her eyes. The irises roll into place and focus on Karen as she backs away in fright.

Alex, Karen’s boss, finally arrives to find Emma dead and Karen in a state of shock. Karen is taken to the hospital while detectives question Alex. Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) asks Alex about the people that lived there, and tell him that Yoko has been missing from work. The detectives notice that the phone handset is missing from the cradle and push the page button. They trace the sounds to the attic where they discover the corpses of Matthew and his wife. They also make the grisly discovery of a human jaw and wonder to whom it belongs and where the rest of the body might be. Later in the movie, Yoko is spotted again by Alex as she is shuffling down the stairs of the caretaking facility where Alex works. He slips, and discovers that it is blood when he touches it. Alex calls out repeatedly to Yoko, who does not answer in any way until she reaches the bottom of the stairs. She then turns around to reveal her face, now horribly disfigured without her jaw and her tongue is hanging out. Alex screams in terror, and the screen fades to black.

Karen tells her story to detectives at the hospital, emphasizing the appearance of a boy. She is constantly tormented by Kayako, in her shower, on a bus, etc. In the days following her experience in the house, she researches the house and learns of the murders.

Karen questions Maria Kirk, Peter’s widow, who does not appear to know anything about the house, its occupants, or why her husband killed himself. She allows Karen to search through old photos. Karen discovers a living Kayako in the background of every photograph, clearly following the couple. Karen returns to the house after learning that her boyfriend, Doug (Jason Behr), has gone there looking for her.

Detective Nakagawa becomes convinced that the rash of deaths and missing people is connected to the house when he views the entire security video taken at the Susan’s office building. He watches as Kayako proceeds down the hall, then to come face to face with the camera as the video fuzzes out. He then returns to the Saeki house with two cans of gasoline. He is distracted by sounds of Toshio drowning in the bath tub. He enters and finds a boy hanging out of the tub, and tries to revive him. His eyes snap open, and Takeo appears behind him. He shoves Nakagawa into the tub and drowns him like Toshio.

Inside the house, Karen experiences a flashback of Peter Kirk’s visit. She watches him, reliving the experience with him finding the body of Kayako and leaving the home. Karen flees downstairs. Doug grabs her ankle before she leaves. He is incapacitated and she tries to drag him to the door. A door opens upstairs. Kayako’s ghost crawls down the stairs toward them and Doug dies in the same way Jennifer Williams did. Karen opens the door, but Kayako’s ghost is suddenly there. She slams the door and kicks over one of the gas cans. She takes Doug’s lighter and tosses it onto the gas as Doug suddenly becomes Kayako. The screen goes white (in the director’s cut, there are shots of Karen being put into an ambulance van).

At the hospital, Karen learns that the house was saved from burning and mourns Doug’s dead body. Suddenly, Kayako’s hair and arm comes from beneath the sheet that covers him, but Karen realizes that it’s just her imagination. Kayako then appears behind Karen. As Kayako utters her death-rattle, the movie ends with an eyeshot of her.

The Gravedancers

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 10:36 am
Movies Online

The Gravedancers is a 2005 horror film, starring Dominic Purcell, Josie Maran, Clare Kramer, Lorvy Lobo and Marcus Thomas. The film was selected to play at the 8 Films To Die For film festival.

Synopsis

The movie opens with a young woman, probably in her twenties, sitting in her room. Suddenly she is attacked by an invisible assailant. A cord zips through the room, grabbing her by the throat and dragging her across the room and down the hall to a stair case. Something pushes the girl and she flips over the banister as the cord is pulled upwards, strangling her to death. As her body goes limp, she drops a black envelope and the screen goes black.

One year later, a group of old friends, Sid, Kira, and Harris, re-unite at a cemetery where a mutual friend was interred earlier in the day. At the reception, Sid invited them to drink. During the drink, Sid also invited them to go to the Crescent View Cemetery, to say goodbye to their friend together, but they insisted. So he goes to the cemetery alone, only to be followed by Harris And Kira.They propose a toast to him and drink the night away. Despite having a wife, Harris engages in a passionate make-out session with Kira in the graveyard. Sid finds a black envelope behind the flowers on the grave. He decides to read it to the other two. The letter says not to mourn him, but to dance the night away and celebrate life. So the group danced on three graves, not knowing the consequences.

After the drunken night of dancing on graves, strange things start to happen. At home, Harris and his wife Allison hear the piano playing, only to find no one there. Allison is attacked by a woman dressed in a white gown covered with blood who shouts “He said he loved me!”. Kira has been calling their house non-stop and Allison is afraid that Kira is stalking them again and trying to rekindle a previous relationship with Harris. In a jealous rage Allison storms to Kira’s house with Harris right behind her. When Kira doesn’t answer the door, she enters through the back door, to find that the house was destroyed.

As Allison and Harris search the house, they hear noises too. When Harris opens the door to the bathroom, Kira appears, covered with blood and then runs back inside, slamming the door behind her. Harris finds Kira clad only in a t-shirt, shivering in the tub, covered in blood and what appears to be scratches. Kira is rushed to the hospital, where it is revealed that the scratches were actually bite marks and that she has been raped. Harris gets a call from Sid saying that he had to check something out. Meanwhile, allison was attacked again by a bloody corpse, only to find that it was a hallucination. Allison and Harris meet with Sid who introduces them to paranormal investigators, Vincent Cochet, and Frances Culpepper. Sid tells them that he thinks he is being haunted, only to find out that all of his friends are too. They talk to Vincent who is interviewing them about what has been happening. When Harris and Sid mention the ‘gravedancing’, the investigators appear shocked. Then noises are heard throughout the house. When out of nowhere, small fires appear in the form of footsteps, one after the other towards Sid, then they stop a few inches away from him.

They are told that they are all cursed by havoc-minded ghosts bent on revenge who will continue to grow stronger until the full moon, when they will be killed according to the book). They return to the cemetery to find out which graves they danced on in order to determine what will happen to them based on who is buried in the graves they danced upon. Frances tells them that where they danced in the section for undesirables such as rapists, murderers, the mentally ill and the socially undesirable.

While at the hospital, the nurse who takes care of Kira visits her. She finds Kira under the bed, who tells her to go away. The nurse wanted to help, not knowing that Kira is being haunted by the soul of the corpse in the grave she danced upon. The enraged soul attacks both the girls and severely injuring the nurse.

After visiting the graveyard, Harris and Sid race to the hospital to tell Kira what happened. Kira leaves the hospital to find out who is trying to kill her.

Frances researches those buried in the plots they danced on, and shows the others pictures and stories about them.

Harris danced on the grave of a woman, Emma Westbrook,a piano teacher who was having an affair with a married man. When he ended the affair, she went to his house and killed his wife with an axe and killed the husband when he walked through the front door. When the police came, they found her drenched in blood, playing the piano. This explains the happenings in their house.

Sid danced on the grave of a little boy, Dennis, who had an infatuation with fire. Before he died he had already set a few small fires. Then one day he accidentally caught his father’s house on fire and became trapped in the blaze, also killing his mother, father, and two older sisters. Sid then asks why, if it was an accident, the boy was buried in the undesirable section. Frances replies that most of the town didn’t believe it was an accident.

Kira danced on the grave of a judge, William Langer, an honored man who was admired by the entire community and died peacefully. Upon his death, they found journals he wrote, which tell of his fetish with sadism and masochism. He would lock women up in cages and tie them with masks over their faces, and eventually kill them, after brutally raping them. Frances then shows Kira a picture saying that he forgot one of the woman in the cage. It was nothing but a few bones of the victim.

The three ask Vincent if there is any way to break the curse. Frances has a suggestion, that if they re-bury the bodies that the soul will be laid to rest and that the attacks may stop. However but it is not a certain they will survive as the full moon only two days away.

They race to the cemetery and begin to dig. Sid, Frances, Kira, Harris, and Vincent dig, while Allison stands guard. As Harris starts to uncover the coffin, Vincent hands him a sack and tells him to make sure he gets every piece of the skeleton. Vincent then goes to Kira and tells her the same thing after handing her a sack. She opens the casket and starts to put the skeleton in the sack.

Suddenly, Harris’ corpse springs to life and attacks him. Kira is suddenly knocked back by a gust of wind and is locked into the casket which is now upright and sinking. After Harris beats the corpse and smashes it to pieces, he goes to help Kira. Frances hears Kira screaming and runs to help but is distracted when suddenly, Sid’s grave catches fire. Frances then runs back to try to help Sid. While Frances is trying to help Sid, Harris, and Vincent can’t open the casket that Kira is trapped in. They then break the top of the casket and pull Kira out. Sid manages to crawl out of the grave and Frances tries to put the fire out on his pant legs. Allison then appears, in screaming that someone is coming. They grab the bodies and run. The person Allison saw turns out to be the cemetery care taker.

The group returns to the house and properly bury the bodies. Relieved that its all over, Harris and Allison return home. They had sex that night and both fell asleep. Harris awakens upon hearing footsteps, and “Allison” embraces her. The “ghost” Harris thought entered the room, and Harris was enraged to see that the ghost was really Allison. He carefully turns the lamp on, and the ghost of Emma enrages them and shatters the glass. They escape and run back to the house where they meet up with Sid and Kira who were also attacked. Frances suggest that they stay in the house saying they’ll be safer. As Vincent tries to explain that it’s not certain that reburying the bodies will work, Frances cuts him off saying that they will survive even though it was the night of the full moon. Vincent then looks out a window to find a fence that was closer to the house than before.

During the night there, Kira and Allison get into a fight over Harris when Sid confessed what really happened when they gravedanced. On the other room, Harris and Sid also had a fight and when Harris distraught Sid, a wall caught fire. When Vincent put down the fire, a writing appeared saying: “Lay you at rest”. The door of the room which contains the two girls suddenly closes and Kira, knowing it was the soul of William Langer, becomes quiet and whispers “Run!!”. Allison replied and asked ” Its him?? and is then blown backwards as Kira is attacked. Kira runs up the stairs and becomes separated from the others. But the paranormal investigators had equipment set up all over the house with cameras since the first meeting. They watch Kira run up the stairs and then they hear her scream. Harris Sid and Allison along with Vincent run to help. Frances tries to leave the room but the doors slam shut trapping her inside. Kira walks into a room and sees cages, and women bound inside of them. She also finds a woman tied and gagged to a weird torture contraption. In the corner of the room an emaciated man is seen hiding in the shadows creeping towards Kira. Kira begins to float and the creature then begins to grope her. When Harris and the others find Kira they discover her still afloat. However the only thing they see is an empty room, and a shard of glass hovering over her throat. When the ghost slides his finger across Kira’s neck, slitting her throat, the others only see the shard of glass slide across her neck. They lift her up and he group attempts to leave the house. . Harris tells Frances to open the door, only to realize the fence is now wrapped around the entire house from the ground to the roof. Frances then becomes upset, saying that its all her fault. Vincent tries to comfort her, saying that everything will work out. Frances then walks behind the desk in the room and pulls out a chest saying that she didn’t mean for things to get this bad. The opens the chest reveal the skulls of the bodies they had buried. She admits to taking them out of the bags because she wanted evidence of paranormal activity. Harris becomes enraged and destroys all the equipment that Frances had and grabs the skull of the ghost who is attacking him. They try to destroy the window, and Vincent, together with Allison, invites the others to get flashlight, only to find Kira’s corpse gone.

A piano begins to play in a nearby room. Kira is at the piano playing the same song that the woman whose grave Harris danced upon, played when she murdered her lover. They walk closer to Kira and Harris calls her name but she continues to play until Harris calls her by the name of the ghost, Emma. She suddenly stops and attacks them. They manage to escape and flee into another room nearby. But Dennis’ ghost causes fire to their room, and they all go out. Frances concluded that the ghost is gone. Suddenly, an axe comes flying from the ceiling and kills her. When the rest of them look up at the ceiling, they see Kira’s body held up laughing. before getting away, Allison got the keys from Frances, pants and went out.

As they search for a way out, Sid gets trapped in a room that is covered in toys and a bed, which appears to be Dennis’ room.. Everything is dark so he grabs a camera that Vincent had earlier and uses the night vision. When he turns around Dennis is standing behind him. The little boy sets the room ablaze, killing Sid. Vincent tries to open the door, but it then explodes sending Vincent flying through another door. Harris finds a window that the fence didn’t reach and tries to get Allison to climb out. As he is slowly lowering her onto the roof, Allison screams as she sees Kira holding the axe. Harris lets go and begins to fight with her and injures his leg.

The fire from the room with Sid is spreading to the rest of the house, so Harris limps as fast as he can only to be confronted by Kira again. Just as she is about to kill him, Allison crashes through the house in the car and tells Harris to get in. As she exits the house, the ghost becomes a huge blue mist-like face. They run outside and Harris tries to limp to a grave that Frances had created outside. A huge blue hand then reaches out and grabs Harris who tries to throw the skull back into the hole and misses by a few inches. As the hand is pulling Harris, Allison is blown back and is struggling to get up and help Harris. The hand pulls Harris into the ground and buries him. Vincent who is alive, but badly burned, appears and throws the skull back into the hole. The spirit is then seen being pulled into the blue mist and disappears. Allison and Vincent then run to rescue Harris who is still alive.

The movie cuts to Harris and Allison walking through the cemetery paying their lasts respects. As they walk away Allison sees someone behind them carrying a shovel. Harris tells her to relax saying that its just the caretaker. The caretaker is the man with white hair and beard that was there when they dug up the bodies. He then places a black envelope that tells those in mourning to dance on graves and celebrate life, on a random tombstone.

Gothika

Filed under: 2000's Ghosts — Tags: — Casper @ 10:34 am
Movies Online

Gothika, a 2003 horror/supernatural thriller movie directed by Mathieu Kassovitz and written by Sebastian Gutierrez, is the story of a psychiatrist (played by Halle Berry) in a women’s mental hospital who wakes up one day to find herself on the other side of the bars, accused of having murdered her husband.

Synopsis

Gothika is the story of a psychiatrist, Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry), who works at a mental hospital and has a car accident after trying to avoid a girl on a road during a stormy night, while driving back home. She rushes to try to help the girl, who turns out to be a ghost of the deceased daughter of her boss (Bernard Hill). The girl, in turn, gets possession of Miranda’s body by burning her after she extended her hand to the girl.

Miranda next wakes up in the very hospital she works for, but as a patient treated by her co-worker, Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.). Drugged and confused, she remembers nothing of what happened after the car accident. To her horror, she learns that her husband Douglas (Charles S. Dutton) was brutally murdered and that she is the primary suspect.

While Miranda copes with her new life in the hospital, the ghost uses her body to carry out messages (most noticeably, she carves the words “not alone” into Miranda’s arm) which leads her former colleagues to believe Miranda is suicidal and is inflicting the wounds on herself.

Meanwhile, Miranda bonds with one of her former patients (who is now her fellow inmate), Chloe Sava (Penélope Cruz). Several times in sessions, Chloe had claimed that she’d been raped while in the hospital, but Miranda had always attributed these stories to mental illness. One night the door to Miranda’s room in the hospital is opened by the ghost that has been haunting her. When she passes Chloe’s room in the hospital, she can hear the rape occurring and momentarily sees a man’s chest pressed against the window. The man’s chest bears a tattoo of an anima sola. Miranda realizes that Chloe was not making up these stories, and when she sees Chloe the next day, she apologizes, and the two embrace. Chloe warns Miranda that her attacker was going to target Miranda next.

Miranda begins regaining some of her memories bit by bit, and slowly comes to remember herself killing her husband. She realizes that the ghost had used her body to murder Doug. This is why all of the physical evidence points to Miranda.

Miranda escapes the hospital, having recognized the girl as a ghost. Seeking clues to the mystery of why she killed her husband, she goes to a farmhouse in Willow Creek, Rhode Island. In the cellar of the barn she discovers a room containing a blood-stained bed, what appears to be a box containing injectable drugs, restraints, and video equipment. She watches the tape that is still in the camera and the viewer hears a woman screaming as if tortured or raped. In the final seconds of the video, which the viewer sees, Doug is seen covering a woman’s lifeless body on the bed with a sheet. At this point, police arrive, and one officer comes closer to Miranda and draws a gun to her while she is holding a knife to him. Miranda backs up to a stair case, and all of a sudden a pair of hands are seen coming from between the stairs, and they wrap around Miranda. The hands belong to an injured, franticly screaming girl trapped in the crawlspace behind the stair case. She is one of the girls kidnapped and raped by Doug. The police release the girl, and Miranda is arrested and taken to jail.

While waiting in jail, the sheriff (John Carroll Lynch), who was Doug’s closest friend, listens sympathetically to Miranda’s idea that the rapist with the anima sola tattoo was also Doug’s accomplice. Insulted by Miranda’s unflattering psychological profile, and realizing that she suspects him, the sheriff reveals that he is the accomplice with the tattoo and attacks Miranda. Miranda kills the sheriff in an act of self defense, with the help of the ghost.

After proving their innocence and sanity, Miranda and Chloe are released from the asylum a few months later. Miranda claims to be free of the ghost’s influence, but finds that she has become a medium and still sees ghosts, one as a young boy standing in the middle of the road. As she walks away, a poster is seen with the words “Have you seen Tim?”, and a picture of the same boy.

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