Teenage girl Hinako returns to her home village on the Japanese island of Shikoku (which she left for Tokyo with her parents when she was a little girl) for the first time. Back then, a girl named Sayori and a boy named Fumiya were her best friends. Now Hinako meets Fumiya again, but Sayori died when she was 16. Hinako soon discovers that strange things are going on. Sayori's mother, a priestess, wants to bring her daughter back from the dead. 88 temples circle the fog-shrouded island as a seal to protect its inhabitants from the dead. But by traversing the temples in reverse order for every year of a deceased person's life, the seals can be undone and the dead person will come back to life. And Sayori's mother is about to travel the temples for the 16th time...
Shikoku is the smallest of the four big Japanese islands (the others are Honshû, Kyûshû, and Hokkaidô). Written in Kanji, "Shikoku" means "island of the four lands", but the title of this film changes the first Kanji - you still read it "Shikoku", but now it means "island of the dead". This island is still a remote place far away from the great Japanese cities, there are large, fog-shrouded forests and mountains and it makes a great setting for an eerie ghost story. The film was released together with Hideo Nakata's "The Ring 2" and produced by the same company, Asmik-Ace Entertainment. Beautifully filmed and filled with atmosphere and some very spooky moments, this is a highly recommended modern "shinrei-mono" (ghost story).
Shikoku is the smallest of the four big Japanese islands (the others are Honshû, Kyûshû, and Hokkaidô). Written in Kanji, "Shikoku" means "island of the four lands", but the title of this film changes the first Kanji - you still read it "Shikoku", but now it means "island of the dead". This island is still a remote place far away from the great Japanese cities, there are large, fog-shrouded forests and mountains and it makes a great setting for an eerie ghost story. The film was released together with Hideo Nakata's "The Ring 2" and produced by the same company, Asmik-Ace Entertainment. Beautifully filmed and filled with atmosphere and some very spooky moments, this is a highly recommended modern "shinrei-mono" (ghost story).