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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Interesting lesson in new techniques but lacking bite and ultimately, scares., 4 February 2005
5/10
Author: Richard Brunton (imdb-update@brunton.org.uk) from Edinburgh, Scotland

The movie doesn't exactly kick off it just flows on to a beginning. Mixing between future images, dreams, computer artwork and the real story, it's all very confusing. However, like many Asian films if you hold on in there things start to become clear, and they do just that. The problem is it takes so long to get out of the "exploration of the house" act, which contains scenes of incredibly drawn out silences, inappropriate dialogue. I even felt myself urging the main character to turn round when her friend told her to look behind her and she just kept looking at him while making confused noises.

It was a struggle, but I got through it. However, you shouldn't miss what's been done there technically. The use of hand-held and remote cameras, the clever movement of the camera into the hand-held to provide a new perspective, all new and interesting film techniques pulled together actually make for some interesting viewing. However, they don't save the story. It's almost as if the makers have tried to pull everything together that the current "kids" are into, videogames, matrix style action shot, technology...nah, doesn't work I'm afraid.

One problem is it's predictable, until the closing shock which is just railroaded over and doesn't seem to be a surprise that the film makers wanted to pursue. They brought out this great one liner near the end of the movie then just let it go.

So poor script, interesting ideas and some cool techniques, but the suspense is lost, as is any horror, surprise and effective story telling. It is mighty shame though, the overall story, once you grasp it, is quite a good and very uneasy one, although it is still left quite unexplained.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Not bad, 12 July 2004
Author: Gafke from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This wasn't as creepy or compelling as "Ju-On" which also starred Megumi Okina, but it was interesting. Nami, a young girl with an artistic flair discovers she has inherited a mansion. She and her ex-boyfriend decide to check the place out with a video camera in hopes of using some of the footage for a video game they are working on, called St. Johns Wort. The huge house is in disrepair and is filled with disturbing paintings, all of which turn out to have been painted by Nami's late father, a morbid genius. As the young couple explore the house, they are monitored by a pair of friends back in the city who map out the mansion and its many rooms on a computer. The exploration turns up many horrible secrets; a photograph of Nami and a missing twin identified as Naomi, a cellar full of the mummified remains of children and a hidden room containing recording equipment. A caretaker who attacks Nami is later found hanging in the kitchen, and a secret stairway leads up to a hidden attic room, a room that Nami has seen before in her childhood nightmares.

This film is very much like a video game. The first half hour or so is spent exploring the many rooms in which clues are found and secret doors revealed. There are some genuinely creepy moments, such as a blue-lit room filled with rotting dolls and some great camera work in the bathroom, where Nami is showering. The climax at film's end involving the identity of Naomi is a little difficult to believe, but as it turns out to be just one ending out of an implied many (just like a video game) it is fairly easy to just go along with it. The characters are all quite likable, a fact which makes the multiple endings much appreciated. All in all, this is a decently clever film with an absence of violence in favor of a creepy atmosphere. It starts out a little slow, so impatient people be warned. The video game obsessed will appreciate this one.

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6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Interesting, 3 February 2005
7/10
Author: AwesomeWolf from Australia

Version: Japanese, English subtitles (by SBS)

I don't know what to make of 'Otogiriso'. It was slow from start to finish, quite a feat for a movie that runs less than 90 minutes, but it built up a strange and creepy atmosphere and was crafted using some interesting concepts.

I can't say much about the plot without spoiling it: Nami (Megumi Okina) has been designing a video game based on dreams she has been having. After finding the house from her dream, Nami and Kohei (Yoichiro Saito), decide to investigate the house. Naturally, this is a bad idea, but video games and movies alike thrive on bad ideas.

The whole concept of 'Otogiriso' is that the movie is a video game. It plays out like a game - the characters are stuck in one location, they have a support team they can phone, they have maps and must find keys for locked doors. A nice idea, but probably one that would appeal to gamers and few other people. Others might appreciate the cinematography, but this is definitely not for everyone.

'Otogiriso' is a good movie, I would recommend it to gamers, and maybe fans of Asian horror movies - 7/10

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Gorgeous filmmaking!, 29 January 2002
7/10
Author: Jamie (retro_in_metro@rogers.com) from toronto, ontario

Absolutely astonishing imagery and camera-work elevates this simplistic horror film to a level that doesn't even have a name. In all honesty, the story isn't that bad to begin with but it's just utterly put to shame by the sheer look of this film. I was expecting another thuggish Japanese horror/thriller, a la INUGAMI, but there was none of that here. Just an amazing experience especially for those who are intrigued by the power of the new wave digital cameras which have been slowly taking over more and more independent productions worldwide.

There are a few scenes in the film with laughable CGI by North American standards, but to nitpick about something that is so boringly dispensed in North American films would be such a gratuitous waste of time. This wasn't some insane Hollywood blockbuster with the standard $70, 000, 000 USD budget, hence requiring 50 million dollars just for the effects budget!

In the end this film totally delivers what is necessary for your enjoyment. An awesome story, genuinely creepy as hell moments, hot girls (BONUS!) and hands down, the best freakin' cinematography that I've seen since..., well, since Fight Club!

This is it people, the future is looking VERY bright for digital films!

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7 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
a new perspective for the passive viewer, 9 May 2002
8/10
Author: ETCmodel02 (e@ianchristy.com) from Vancouver, BC

Excellent production design within a tight scope that had enough room to breathe that the view should never feel cheated. I enjoyed the abundant MAC, Quick Time and Lycos product placements, a nice now to the media savvy. Some other nice touches, like a great video game level maker that is a Japanese go girl with blonde mane instead of the expected 20-something white male hacker stereotype.

Aesthetically I was enthralled with the stacks of amazingly, nay, beautifully disturbing paintings all about the home.

There is lots of playful stuttered editing, stylistically playing heavily on multiple planes of perspective (filmic reality vs. hidden cameras vs. the hand held camera one character is toting around). Reminds me at times of the aspects that I liked of the classic horror games like Seventh Guest. I think that really was why the film was nifty for me, a former video game artist / designer. The layers of real vs. game in the making and the tight interaction between the adventuring couple inside the mansion vs. the go girl artist and pensive programmer back in the design studio. The inter-cutting of the two locations combined with the playful changes moment to moment in virtual film stocks and perceived point of view really took this tidy, cute little yarn to a new level. Minute details like the miscellaneous brass keys helps convey the parallels as well; the keys seemed like level objectives true to genre. The design of the film further seems to question the movie's very existence as a construction in all as well as in layered fictional elements, wrapped up nicely with a sense of choices being explored without undermining the integrity of the narrative.

Admirably, throughout the film the narrative toys with the notion of linear versus interactive, which tends to parallel the comparison of film to video games respectively. This film actually approaches a sort of implied interactivity, a new perspective for the viewer in a time based medium to the proverbial backbone of the narrative that I've not previously seen, at moments both inside the story and as well a voyeur to the story. As linear progression without options is an abstraction of reality humans accept far too easily, this film did a splendid job of perverting the linear and can at least be viewed as a solid indication of the potential of newer technologies applied to film projects yet to come.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Style over substance, a "modern" horror film, 31 December 2006
Author: DVD_Connoisseur from England

When video game makers decide to visit a decaying Gothic mansion (which belonged to one of the crew's deceased relatives) in order to produce their next video game, things go weird very quickly indeed. It's only a matter of time before things become deadly serious and long hidden secrets are revealed...

"St. John's Wort" (2001) is an example of a modern horror film. It's shot using digital cameras, giving it that unique hi-tech sheen that some may love or hate. The effects in post-production are interesting, for example, scenes going into fast forward, pausing and rewinding, etc. There's an interesting use of colour and an impressive use of sound effects, too.

Despite the modern look of the film, the script sadly did not hold me glued to my seat with fear and anticipation of events to come. In fact, there were moments when this film became a little boring. It tries to blend reality and virtual reality but doesn't really cut the mustard in the way I felt "Avalon" did. This film may be interesting for those interested in the geography / making of video games but that's where any deepness ends.

Still, there are a couple of attractive girls in the movie for those looking for eye candy, and mixed with impressive video effects and a top drawer soundtrack, this still rates as around 5/10. After other recent top-drawer explorations into Asian cinema, I felt this was disappointing but the DVD is inexpensive and still provides more entertainment value than many of its western counterparts.....

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Style is what makes a movie watchable, 27 December 2005
8/10
Author: Julie Hoverson from Seattle

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

While the story of St. John's Wort is something I could easily imagine coming out of Hammer Films, or a classic Vincent Price movie, it's not BAD, and the visuals more than make up for it.

PLOT: Nami inherits a spooky old mansion, takes her ex-boyfriend along so they can scope out using the place as a setting for their video game. Turns out she may have had a twin who died when she was a child. Also turns out her father was a crazy artist, who painted creepy pictures. Is the house haunted? Is the twin still alive? Who is the spooky caretaker? See what I mean by it being very Vincent Price-ish? Anyway, the plot is fairly solid, though I did find at least one of the ending plot twists useless and incomprehensible, but since it really affected nothing else in the film, I ignored it.

The VISUALS, on the other hand...

The whole movie is oddly colored, which is unsettling to begin with, and which makes sections of it look like they might be CGI, or bluescreened, or might just be badly tinted - all adding to the unreality of the whole thing. Also, the camera "view" keeps shifting, from "reality" to the ex's hand-held camera, to B&W surveillance cameras, and even to a "video game version".

My favorite bit of unreality involves the caretaker - when they arrive at the place, the caretaker gives Nami the keys, but the scene is played out as a video game sequence, with the caretaker icon's lines being printed on the screen, rather than spoken - thus making it impossible to determine anything, even gender, about this "person".

Overall, I found it very watchable.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Was it independent? felt like it, 17 July 2005
6/10
Author: siderite from Romania

This movie is like a video game, Elvira style, if anyone remembers it :) Girl inherits spooky house, goes there, finds out about her family and childhood and "the terrible secret". The fact that the whole thing was done in order to create materials for a video game added an element of obvious to the movie.

I liked the actors, they played well for their parts, you might recognize the girl from Ju-On The Grudge, cute as ever. I felt that the starting idea was very promising and if the movie would have drifted in the "asian horror" area, it could have been a very interesting movie about teenager enterprise. This way, the film wasn't serious enough to be called a horror, nor was is funny enough to be called a comedy. And I have come to dislike movies that increase their level of complexity by mirroring themselves (let's do a movie about making a movie about...).

In the end it was OK, but nothing special. I would rather play Elvira again.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Good but not entirely satisfying, 1 May 2005
7/10
Author: TheatreX from Louisville, KY

A young girl (Nami) inherits a house where she lived until she was 3, and she and her ex-boyfriend go check it out. They're part of a team of video game designers, and they transmit their findings to the rest of the team because they want to use the house & some ideas for a new game. Nami knew the house belonged to her father but that's all, she didn't know who her father was. Apparently he was a great artist, but from some of the other things that they found in the house he had other interests too. Not wholesome ones, either. One of my complaints lies in the making of the movie, wherein certain parts are made to look like a video game, so you're never sure if you're seeing a game or the movie. However, considering that I've seen "House of the Dead" which is the worst-ever movie-based-on-a-video-game, this is done quite well and was more intriguing and mysterious. This is not a top-notch film but it's decent entertainment. 7 out of 10.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
The first half of the film boasts excellent suspense, but all that withers away in the second act..., 8 November 2004
Author: willywants

Nami has been creating artwork for a new video game based on images she's been seeing in her dreams. With one of the game producers, she travels out to an abandoned house that seems to match her visions. As they explore the old mansion, Nami begins to have more visions of a forgotten childhood, until at last she comes across a photo of twin infants, labeled "Nami" and "Naomi". As Nami and the producer go from room to room, an unseen person seems to be watching them from a hidden room. "St. John's Wort" (Not the most appealing title ever) is NOT, by any means, in the same league as "Ringu", "Ju-On" or "The Eye". It lacks the subtle suspense and substance that made those films so great. This film IS, however, one of the most stylish films I've seen. Director Shimoyama Ten went all out with wild camera angles, a slick look and a great atmosphere, which, unfortunately, he fails to sustain into the films second act. There are some truly hilarious plot twists--I won't give them away, but there so unintentionally funny that they almost make the film worth renting for that reason alone.

Don't come in expecting a suspenseful masterpiece. it isn't. Think of it as, say, the most stylish home video of all time, and you'll enjoy it.

6.5/10.

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