Still with Ikuko in tow, Yoshimi finds a flat in a run down apartment block in a far flung corner of Tokyo. Already the signs are bad - a strange incident in the lift and the weird ancient receptionist throb with ill vibes - but she can afford it and once it's done up it should be ok. Meanwhile, Ikuko starts school and Yoshimi goes out looking for work. School is good and the interview, while messy, goes fine.
Landing on feet. Then there's a weird circular stain on the ceiling of her room that is dripping. A toy bag that Ikuko found on the roof keeps coming back, even when Yoshimi bins it outside. The stain grows, now more like a giant slug. When she goes to the flat upstairs there's no one home. From the lift back down she sees the door open and a girl in a yellow raincoat appears. The lift window is dirty but the girl doesn't appear to have a face. In fact she looks just like the photo of the missing girl fading on the lamp post near the school.
Hideo Nakata's film of Koji Suzuki's story was his third collaboration after the first two Ringu films and he demonstrated something that film makers seldom do after early successes in genre movies, he got subtler. There is one jump scare in the entire film. It is brief and contains the sound only of a child. There is a twist to the story but it is a soft one, gradually turning until the knot appears and then it's not "aaaah" but more of an "oh".
The ruling emotion of this film is not terror (though there is plenty to dread) but sadness, a persistent and grave sense of tragedy that we will see when it is ready to appear. Hitomi Kuroki as the harried Yoshimi tries to contain the blows that life is dealing her but she breaks into screeching emotion increasingly. My take on this is not that she is given to melodrama as a performer but understands that her character finds the outpouring steadying. As a neglected child she witnesses herself compelled by her circumstances to neglect Ikuko who waits after hours at the school, withdrawing into herself. The pressure of this and its crushing irony alone would give anyone the screeches. We do see her calmer and certainly happier, it's just that the universe is denying her control over her life. One detail that always gets to me is how Yoshimi, even in moments of crisis, remembers to take her shoes off when she enters the flat and puts them back on when she leaves it. One normalising ritual so ingrained it is impossible to avoid.
Rio Kanno as Ikuko gives us a brave child who wishes life were not so unfair. She maintains as stoney a face as she can. This allows us to project bewilderment on to her as she faces the ghost of Mitsuko across the playground as the rain torrents down. There is no need for projection when Mitsuko finds her trying to hide (in a game). The ghost girl's feet approach slowly as water pours down her shins and leaves a stream behind. Ikuko's stare is one of frozen fear. The incident leaves her unconscious and half drowned. Another slap in the face for her mother. Earlier scenes of the pair playing or negotiating as mother and child are moving and our memory of them by this scene wrenches hard.
I announced spoilers in the title of this article and the harder ones start here. The climax of this film is one which has placed it at the top of my favourite ghost story movies. The coda keeps it there. Finding that Mitsuko didn't go missing so much as fall in the water tank that keeps popping hairs into glasses downstairs. Investigating the tank, the girl's red bag (the one that keeps appearing to Yoshimi) falls in and, reaching for it, so does Mitsuko. When Yoshimi climbs the tank to find her the ghosts knocking increases until it creates little fist sized dents in the corrugated iron.
Events accelerate until Yoshimi has to decide between Ikuko's life and her own as the rotting skinned monstrosity is strangling her. Her face falls, She calls to Ikuko to stay back and tells Mistuko not to worry, that she is her mother and everything is well again. Now we understand that the ghost was not out to harm Ikuko but claim her mother. One moment of grotesque horror in enough to make the heartrending sadness of it weigh tons.
This film has a coda scene that will haunt you. A teenage Ikuko is with her high school friends and notices that they are near her old neighbourhood. She takes a stroll along the river and goes back for old times' sake and is surprised to find her mother, still young, is in the flat. It's a happy reunion. They catch up on details until with a groaning liquid music cue we see the blur of Mitsuko standing in the background, waiting for this indulgence to be over. With some deft edits we see Ikuko is alone in the room. She rises and returns to her friends, spooked but maintains in a voiceover that she always felt her mother was watching over her. Watching over her? At the behest of an eternally needy, grasping and gripping monster child.
When I first saw that coda (MIFF 2022 when the film was released globally) I heard that voiceover and the sentimental scoring of the strings and wrote it off as saccharine. It was an early case of my hunting and finding a copy of the DVD (from a Hong Kong based online shop). I showed it to friends and this time the full resonance of the ending and coda hit me in the gut, pushing the title to the top of the pile of the lifelong best. I never tire of it and when I again look at the muddy yellow green field of the title screen and hear the slow gongs of the electronic score I feel at home and ready to get tense all over again. The mouldy pallet drips down and I am once more lost.
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