The Crone Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A J-pop trio visit a haunted nursing home with disastrous results.

Review: I'm usually the first to point out how bad a movie is, but this was nowhere near as bad as the reviews made it out to be. Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of stupid moments and mind-boggling decisions, but this was often countered with an interesting idea to balance things out. I think the main thing that will annoy a viewer is the cliched nature of everything. Let's face it, this could have easily been worked into a "Grudge" sequel and no one would have batted an eye. That's not a good thing, but, hey, a Kayako-clone is at least a safe bet. In fact, I was almost going to rate this as above average until that nonsensical ending. Never underestimate the ability of an ending to fuck up your movie.

J-pop idols visiting a haunted place is nothing we haven't seen before, but the actresses they used were each really cute; Shiori Kitayama, Miki Honoka, and Kaoru Goto in case you're wondering. While on the subject of these chickadees, there is a lot of thigh action going on with these girls! Definitely not complaining. Anyway, the movie doesn't mess around, and the ghosts are already coming out to play within the first 10 minutes. Considering how short this film is, I'm glad they didn't waste what little precious time they had on padding; though, they did focus a lot of drama on the girls not liking one another. As far as the scares are concerned, they weren't too bad, but why does no one react normally to them? If you found yourself being haunted by ghosts, would you keep showing up to work like it's no big deal? To give you a better idea of what I mean, one guy has his legs supernaturally broken and later amputated. Instead of being freaked out, or even taking time to recover for that matter, this asshole is seriously at work the next fucking day! Yeah...that would totally happen.

Essentially, the main ghost, or the crone, is running around like a fucking crackhead on PCP chasing after victims randomly. My god, these shots are laughably bad. I'm assuming they have a kid or some little ol' Japanese girl doing these scenes, but it looks hilarious considering it's supposed to be an old woman. Don't even get me started on the dumb noise she makes--needs to get one of my patented roundhouse kicks to the face for that shit. With that said, I did like the concept of the crone, and she's moderately scary looking. Again, the scares really aren't all that bad to see, they are simply cliched. At one point, one of the girls thinks she's Robin Williams in "Jack" as she ages rapidly to become a grandma. Instead of taking her to a hospital to be studied as a medical anomaly, the girl's mom decides to be a crazy bitch. Not sure what that was all about. And even though all of these scary things are happening, the girls still go back to the haunted nursing home to shoot more scenes! That's great.

We finally learn that the residents of the nursing home were abused and later tied up and left to die. But before this, the old people managed to create a doll that they channeled their vengeful willpower into; this magically turned into the crone spirit. The last girl standing is nearly killed by the crone, but the spirits of the other two girls come to her aid and help her defeat the crone. I really liked this aspect. I've been noticing more films lately featuring the ghosts of victims coming back to fight evil spirits. I mean, it stands to reason that if an evil spirit can exist a good one should also be able to. The last girl destroys the doll and things are seemingly over. Since this is a cliched horror film, they couldn't leave well enough alone, and the crone appears out of thin air sometime later. The last thing that happens is the crone turns the girl into a grandma. Let's just pretend the ending was some kind of subtle social commentary regarding the fact that Japan's retirement problem cannot be overcome by today's youth. That's what I'm going with at least.

I can't necessarily recommend checking this one out, but it's not as horrible as one would suspect. The crone notion is interesting, the girls are cute, the film is straight to the point with the pacing, and the scares were decent enough. On the other hand, the characters react nonsensically, the crone's running was unintentionally hilarious, there are a few shoddy effects, and there are a ton of shenanigans going on that seriously deter from the experience. If a lot of the idiocy had been toned down, this could have been a respectable little film despite the cliches.

Notable Moment: Any scene where you see the crone running around like she's Sonic dressed as Inuyasha. Unless you have some kind of fear of the geriatric community, you can't help but laugh each time.

Final Rating: 5/10