Ring of Curse (aka Gomennasai) Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A girl discovers her bullied classmate has the ability to kill those who read whatever she writes.

Review: This is another film brought to us by the ladies at "Hello! Project" which I've mentioned before as a music label's division for various, female J-pop singers. This time they feature the trio group, "Buono!," comprised of Airi Suzuki, from C-ute, and Miyabi Natsuyaki and Momoko Tsugunaga from Berryz Koubou; Ms. Suzuki is the main character, Yuka, Ms. Natsuyaki is the bullied student, Kurohane, and Ms. Tsugunaga is the class bitch, Sonoda. The girls are cute and they definitely gave it their all, but they look better in their music videos (makes me wish Maimi were in this movie). Anyway, the story feels all too similar to one of their other films, "Ousama Game," that I've already gone over, mixed heavily with "Death Note" concepts. There are interesting gimmicks that do make this film amusing, but the overall experience is boring with too much talking that eats up the time that could have been put toward implementing scares pertaining to the story. It sucks too because there were plenty of moments that could have been scary and aspects that could have been cut or told through flashbacks rather than being expressed by long scenes and elaborate setups.

We get an introduction from the "Buono!" girls at the start of the film claiming they're reenacting real events; this practice of making the audience think you're movie may be based in fact has become quite common recently as a lame marketing ploy, but I'm okay with it. From here, Yuka explains to us the tale of the troubled Kurohane and her cursed writing. Kurohane is kind of the class outcast, but she is the top student in most regards and has a reputation for writing; I really loved that the bullies jokingly refer to her as Sadako a few times. Yuka is mostly indifferent toward Kurohane, if not, slightly jealous of her talents, but she tries to be nice to Kurohane out of respect for said talents. At one point, the class nominates Kurohane to write a script for a school festival that is intended to somehow make her look stupid in the process. After noticing Kurohane taking the script seriously and feverishly writing, Yuka warns her of the bullies' intentions but Kurohane creepily reveals it is that exact reason why she is trying so hard. When one of the bullies takes Kurohane's notebook ahead of schedule, she has a strange reaction when reading it--slipping into a suffocating, heavy breathing state. The students later learn that the one bully died, and a teacher, eager to read the script, committed suicide after warning Yuka to never read it.

Yuka does not believe the deaths are coincidences, but wants to remain skeptical due to the sheer implausibility of the situations. After Yuka's friend reads a page and another bully reads the script, both turning up dead, Yuka becomes convinced that Kurohane has cursed her writing to kill whoever reads it. After blocking Kurohane from killing Sonoda, Yuka confronts her face to face where she learns that Kurohane is dying, and she tested her ability by killing her younger sister. This is probably the dumbest aspect of the film since it plays off a subjective idea and applies it to the supernatural. If that doesn't make sense to you, let me explain it as this: Kurohane claims that whatever she writes will kill the reader, but the time it takes to kill them is based on her skills as a writer. In essence, if her grammar and content sucks, it takes longer to kill the person. How on earth can a "curse" be that specific? So if she writes in net lingo and emoticons, you're saying it will take forever for the person to die? How does the curse know grammar and determine what accounts for good writing anyway?! It would have made more sense if they simply explained whatever she writes kills the reader, but the longer they read, the faster they die. At best, we could assume the effort put into the writing translates into increased will power, thus, enhancing the potency of the curse, but that's not how the movie explains it. As it stands, the more typos and amateur nature to the writing, the longer you can endure the curse.

Finding an alternate way to get to Sonoda with a deceptive email, Kurohane explains that her curse will become even stronger if she is killed and she will live on through the curse. So in case you started to feel sympathetic toward Kurohane, she has to go off the deep end and go cat-lady levels of crazy. Sonoda then pops up to stab Kurohane to death, with like a hundred strikes, before committing suicide as Yuka looks on. This scene is halfway into the movie, but it felt like it should have been much earlier on or this should be the time to really pick up the pacing. Nope. Yuka mysteriously receives Kurohane's diary and we spend seriously 20 minutes going into details that could have been explained faster, or not at all, and recapping scenes we already saw! That's almost unforgivable. With only twenty more minutes of action left in the movie, this is when they decide to finally tell a tale that should have been presented from the onset! Yuka regales new classmates of the Kurohane story and they decide to look at a text Kurohane had sent Yuka to...kill her...I guess. This leads to the girls all dying one after another as they try to seek a way to stop Kurohane's ongoing curse that can now kill even if you look at a single word. People do start to see Kurohane's ghost as well, but she looks like a regular person; wow, wait until the end of the movie for the ghost to appear and absolutely no makeup effects to boot?

When Yuka is the last one alive, she realizes the only way to live is to go all "Ringu" on everybody by treating the curse like a chain letter that needs to be passed on. Apparently Kurohane's ghost only has the power to kill one person at a time so, the more you spread the curse, the lower your chances of dying become. This leads to the best aspect of the film as we cut back to the girls of "Buono!" explaining that they passed the curse on to the audience in order to lower their chances of dying. The reason why the film was known as "gomennasai" was because that means "I'm sorry" as in sorry to pass this curse on to you. That's kind of clever, and I know that kind of plotline will screw with some anxious viewers. To make things even more amusing, there's a scene after the credits where they're pretending to interview Ms. Natsuyaki about playing her character, but she is interrupted by the other two girls arguing about how they're cursed and they've cursed their fans as well. I'm not going to lie, that was awesome.

I really want to like this film due to the cleverness of pretending the events were real and to, quite literally, involve the audience with the film. The girls are cute, and Ms. Suzuki is always great to see in action. There are moments of fantastic imagery and creativity, like a shot of Kurohane walking through mist under an overpass, that I wish comprised more of the movie as a whole. But, in the end, the film falters far too often than it succeeds. You can't have two people narrate events of the film that we see anyway--sometimes twice! This wastes a ton of time and makes it boring. Wouldn't it have made more sense to begin the movie with Yuka telling her new friends about Kurohane from her perspective? Then with creepy shit happening, Yuka flashes back to events that connect to the scenes of the girls trying to stop the curse. In the meantime, you could have shots of Kurohane lurking about with actual makeup effects to appear intimidating. I mean, Ms. Natsuyaki has too pretty of a face for me to be scared of her trying to be frightening. I hate to see this kind of potential wasted, but maybe they could do a sequel and take things up a notch. I would say that if you're a fan of the girls involved with this, be sure to check it out. As far as casual viewers, this is nothing you haven't seen before and done better, but it does have that wonderful ending that leaves you somewhat satisfied with a sense of inclusion. Eh, this movie played it too safe or wanted to save money on effects or something.

Notable Moment: When Yuka's friend discusses the logical conclusion that if curses were real the USA would have weaponized them by now. I find this statement funny and sadly true.

Final Rating: 5.5/10

Ms. Suzuki as I prefer her: