Howling Village

In the end, despite some strong visuals, the film feels just like a ride through a tepid haunted house: scary and mysterious, yet empty and unremarkable.

[Director Takashi] Shimuzu draws us in just enough to spur our interest, and delivers just enough inspired imagery and eerie vibes so the movie's ever so slightly more than just another ghost story.

It's intriguing for Western audiences for its handsome Japanese vistas, and it's not absurd enough to be a howl, but it's not exactly good, either.

It aims high but this overly busy horror fails to knit together its many disparate pieces into a compelling whole.

Shimizu proves with his latest horror-narrative that one does not need to reinvent the genre to be able to deliver a film that satisfies spectators seeking thrills and scares.

Gone is the raw terror of the Grudge films, but in its place is a convoluted story about the different ways in which a community lives - or dies - with the misdeeds of yesteryear, carried out in the name of 'progress'.