Sana Review: Ju-On Director Takashi Shimizu Recycles His Own Bag Of Tricks In Boy Band Horror Flick

Sana (NC16)

Starring Makita Sports, Akari Hayami, Alan Shirahama

Directed by Takashi Shimizu

A boyband – an actual seven-member Japanese group called Generations from Exile Tribe – gets stalked by a wannabe Ju-On ghost via an obsolete recording device ripped off from Ring.

Instead of people being terminated through a cursed video tape, folks who listen to an infectious tune here – called “Everybody’s Song” – stored in an old cassette tape from circa 1993, simply vanish. Elevator, recording studio, bedroom, shower. Poof. Gone. 

One guy gets the female spook jump on him in a hotel corridor. Which is kinda normal for a boyband dude if you think about it.

The spirited schoolgirl spirit, Sana Takaya – young newcomer Tomoko Hoshi portrays a masochistic weirdo with seriously harmful fetishes at school and home creepily well – “collects the voices of souls”. 

Huh? 

“My dream is to deliver my song to everybody and pull them into my world.” Basically, she likes capturing the sound of something dying. Like a cat being strangled. Yikes.   

“Please listen,” Sana, trying to get her melody malady played virally over the air, pleads with her eerie voice from the past when the cassette tape is played backwards in a hidden-demon-track way. 

Er, can we just don’t hear it with this lame horror rehash that frustratingly pulls back from being truly scary since its victims are primarily celebs playing themselves? Essentially, there’s both gawking (pop idols) and stalking (ghost) going on at the same time here.

Can anything get more blatantly meta than this? Like BTS being spooked by their own deadhead fangirl left over from the 1990s. Do we call this The Humming Dead?

Anyway, Generations play fictionalised versions of their real selves with their real names in this deal directed by Ju-On creator Takashi Shimizu who’s clearly trying to revive past glories. By snagging a new younger audience prone to pretty boys and recycling his own dusty treasure chest of scare tactics.

But this pic is mostly still just a new setting with – pardon the pun – an old tune. The horror component staged in a Ju-On-style dark empty house and the boyband angle don’t quite gel well. They look too flimsily and conveniently manufactured. Plus, didn’t the Japanese girl group, AKB48, do this same thing about a malicious melody back in 2007 called The Suicide Song?

The good thing is that Shimizu captures the idiosyncrasies and routines of a crowded boyband quite interestingly. One by one, the guys get nailed in their hotel confines as they rehearse songs and dance moves while acting terrified rather unconvincingly. Look, you, I and especially they, know that these actual pop idols can’t possibly pop into thin air forever, right? 

There’s a good joke, though, when the private investigator, Gonda (actor-comedian Makita Sports), hired by befuddled band manager, Rin Kakuta (Gintama's Akari Hayami), to investigate the disappearances, can’t tell one dude from another. Just like me in similar confusion. Although you do eventually figure out that Alan Shirahama is the main good-looker since he accompanies Gonda and Rin on their ghostbusting adventure.  

Now, it’s up to director Shimizu to make that venture frighteningly worthwhile. Which he does when the trio goes to Sana’s old school to unearth long-buried mysteries.   

But alas, Ju-On fans waiting for a good jolt have seen this all before. And even for newbies, a garishly made-up Sana spook coming down the stairs with a silly tape recorder around her neck is no scare match for a terrifying creepy-crawly Kayako ghost from an actual Ju-On.  

You know that Shimizu has run out of ideas when he installs a little girl version of Sana darting about just like that freaky little boy, Toshio, from his earlier JO fright flicks.

By the way, stay on for an extra post-credits scene. 

You’ll see that, ghost or no ghost, the mindless mass adulation of a boyband is still a really frightening thing.(2/5 stars)

Photo: Shaw Organisation