Ushikubi Village

After watching a viral video, a woman who believes that she's the twin of one of the participants decides to investigate the town where the video was shot, eventually uncovering a deadly secret within the town involving their belief in the malevolent nature of twins and tries to stop it from consuming her. Overall, there's a lot to like with this one. This starts with an intriguing setup that provides everything with a rather chilling environment to work with. The initial setup of the fateful village and the cursed means through which it spreads throughout the internet to reach the girl by means of the viral video is a fairly strong one. That comes off rather nicely with the stranger in the video who looks exactly like her which offers up the kind of inquiry to look further into the legends surrounding it. With plenty of build-up focusing on the story involving the spirit that haunts the village cursing everyone who hears it to die shortly afterward, none of this is original but serves well enough in this kind of feature by offering the kind of baseline for the ghosts and spirits of the area to appear naturally in the film. The later reveal about the superstitions of the residents involving twins and how she plays a part in the curse running through the town carries this kind of appealing setup rather well. This provides the film with the opportunity to feature some chilling sequences and setpieces. The opening viral video of the schoolgirls exploring the abandoned building on a ghost hunt and encountering the vengeful spirit is an appropriately creepy intro that provides some effective interplay between the on-screen chat with the viewers and a ghostly twist that comes off quite well. Later interactions along the way to the fabled village offer up similarly fine sequences, while the highlight sequence of the two exploring the hotel is an absolute standout. With some chilling images of the ghost lurking in the background watching over them, some ingenious interplay of the ghosts' haunting continually affecting the area and the lengthy nature all combine together into a fantastic part of the film. As the curse gets stronger and starts taking the lives of her friends and those around her, this sets up the solid finale featuring the confrontations in the underground caves and the emotional resonance found in the story finally being resolved to bring peace to the area. All told, these aspects make for an enjoyable time here. While these offer up positive points, there are some drawbacks with this one. The biggest letdown is this one's underwhelming pace that lets it build up far too long of a running time. The exploits at the beginning diving deep into her troubled home life and school issues trying to keep the boyfriend from charming her as she's obviously only interested in him for practical rather than romantic means just drag this one out. Likewise, although immensely creepy in their own right, many of the scare scenes and shocks are shot in ways that take quite a while to play out which is somewhat distressing. The cadence and tempo of the scenes come up short on several occasions, especially in the abandoned hotel that seems to take forever which is also the case of the backstory flashback that fills in the gaps of the plot. While answering the questions of who everyone is, their relationships, and the tragedy that brings them together, it's all so slow and drawn out that it adds unnecessary length mainly by the speed of the scene rather than the actions. It's all that bring this one down in the end. Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.