Zero 零
You know that thing that Japan generally thinks of LGBT? You know, where being gay is a phase that teens go through and that once they are adults they outgrow? Where it’s okay to be gay, as long as you are still young? Well, this is what this movie is about, that is, the main message it seems to send! That is one of the only two things that I don’t like about this movie! This ‘gay is only a phase’ thing really rubbed me the wrong way! Worse still they even turned it into a curse. A curse that affects only girls because there are no gay men in Japan apparently, oops, I meant gay boys since grown-ups can’t be gay having outgrown such nonsense. I am totally tasting metal in my mouth right now!
The other is that they tried so hard to be intelligent by mixing in human elements into what is supposed to be a supernatural/horror movie! If any one of you watched those promotional videos I posted a while back while this movie was in cinemas, Ayami was saying something about her character Aya being the next Sadako which really brought my hopes up even higher about this movie seeing as I am a great horror fan. So you can imagine my disappointment when in the movie, apparently the Aya ghost was not the one causing all the deaths but rather humans! Okay, that really pissed me off! You can’t compete with Sadako, Kuchisake Onna or any other legendary villains like that, nope! If they had made Ghost Aya the villain that she was supposed to be instead of trying to be wise bums, this would have been a 5 star horror and the birth of the next Gen villain but alas. Seriously, Michi did not even get to take a photo, not a single photo, with that famous camera of the Fatal Frame series we know and love! Not one!!! All the rage!
Other than those two facts, this movie was really great. Which isn’t saying much seeing as those two points I just touched upon are what make this movie’s gears move! You see, the main thread in this movie is that there is a curse that breaks lose when a girl kisses the photo of the girl she likes. Apparently this has been going on for generations in this school (There is a whole gallery of lovers from years past) and up until the current head sister’s school days, the curse was un-stoppable as in every graduating class there was always a couple the loved each other so much that instead of growing up and having to be separated, they would commit suicide in order to freeze their time together forever. The head sister was one of these girls and was in love too once. But when they went to commit suicide together with the girl she loved, the head nun cheated and did not fall with her lover. That apparently broke the curse!
But with Aya’s arrival, the curse began anew. Girls would fall for her to the point of them breaking out the curse all over again by kissing her photo, which we actually find out wasn’t her photo but more on that later. Aya who is also being affected by the curse by being bombarded with weird visions, decides to lock herself in her room for the whole last term. Also because she couldn’t handle the way her fellow students looked at her wherever she would go and as she said, did not understand the feeling of a girl loving another girl (to which Michi replies that she doesn’t even understand the feeling of loving a boy. I gave her 10 points for that BTW!).
And so the movie opens around this time, only a few days left to go before graduation, Aya is still locked up in her room, the girls are going crazy without their Aya, the curse is spreading and getting stronger. And in the process bodies begin to fall like sheep.
 Nakajo Ayami as Aya |
 Morikawa Aoi as Mitchi |
百合 Fever 