Who's in It: Joshua Jackson, Rachael Taylor, David Denman, Megumi Okina
The Basics: If recent movie history is an accurate reflection of real life, all ghosts live in Japan. And those ghosts are upset. They're especially upset when non-Japanese people like Sarah Michelle Gellar and former Dawson's Creek castmembers go there and muck around. They're so upset they'll even invade your camera and just live there, ruining every picture you try to take. It's not very scary, but it's totally inconvenient.
What's the Deal? As unfrightening PG-13 horror films go, this unfrightening PG-13 horror film is the most unfrightening of the year. It's even more unfrightening than The Eye, which featured such unfrightening scenes as Jessica Alba yelling into an oven. This one has unfrightening scenes of Jackson sitting in a chair. OK, there is one jumpy moment. That happens when Jackson turns around really fast in that chair. All the 11-year-olds in the audience went, "AUUGGH!" when that part happened. So, if you're 11, then that part is really going to freak you out.
Cheap Shock Factor: Medium range. The movie uses them (see: Jackson-chair-scene explanation above) but not too much. I think in films like this, there's a standard-issue allowance, like three maybe. They know they can't get away with too many more than that, or even the 11-year-olds start to get annoyed.
How You Know It's Fiction, Besides the Whole Freaky Ghosts Thing: There's a scene on a subway with Taylor. And the subway has a reasonable amount of people on it and no metro employees are there sardine-canning people onto the thing with giant crowd-prod implements.
Long Term Prospects: I don't see this Asian-horror-remake trend ending soon. I wish I could say that it was. But there's a never-ending supply and lots of TV actors out there looking for work. Any work. Future titles in the works: The Elbow, The Crumb, Boredoom and Shhhh. Actually I just made all that up. Or did I?