Hide and Go Kill

BloodyGoodHorror

Enough. No more ripoffs of “The Ring”. I know horror is a super-cyclical genre and that success begets imitation, but “The Ring” is thirteen years old. There is absolutely nothing new or original that can be done with that template. No more snowy TVs (seriously, do TVs even do that anymore?). No more creepy ghost girls with hair covering their face. No more cursed videotapes (or internet videos, or text messages, or voicemails or telegrams). It’s all been beaten into the ground at least ten times over.

As if it wasn’t obvious enough, “Hide and Go Kill” is yet another “Ring” knockoff. In addition to possibly having the stupidest title of any of these knockoffs, it’s also a strong contender for being the worst of these movies. Where all of these films have been incredibly derivative and un-original, “Hide and Go Kill” also manages to be one of the worst paced films I’ve ever watched and is also insanely repetitive. By the end of the film, I was angry, bored and staring at the sequel “Hide and Go Kill 2” (also known as “Creepy Hide and Seek”!) on the top of my “To Review” pile with an ever growing sense of dread.

“Hide and Go Kill” is an anthology film of sorts. Instead of using the narrative style to tell a multitude of varied types of stories (such as the comic book in “Creepshow” or the fairytales in “Tales from the Dark Side”), the focus here is on one urban legend. While not sounding like a terrible idea, the problem with this execution lies in how specific the urban legend is. Instead of going for something like the urban legend in “Candyman”, the legend here is about a bizarre game called “Hide and Seek Alone” (I feel like this is a good time to point out that the subtitles are translated incredibly poorly, leading to stupidity like the name of this game). The game is played as such:

1) Remove all the stuffing from a stuffed animal.
2) Fill the now empty stuffed animal with some rice. Why rice? Who knows, it’s never explained.
3) Turn every light in the house off except for the snowy TV.
4) Fill the bathroom sink with water and wait until 2:55 am. At 2:55, soak the bear in the water.
5) Wait until 3:00 am, then stab the bear, tell it that it “you’re now the Devil” and go hide in the closet.
6) Spooky shit commences. The girl from “The Ring” crawls out of the TV (ugh) and stalks you around the house. If she finds you, you’ll face will get all contorted (you know, like in “the Ring”) and you’ll die.
7) To win, fill your mouth with salt water (?), go back into the bathroom and spit it on the doll and repeat “I win” three times.
8) Make a shitty movie about it.

As it’s so in-depth and specific, every story goes through each and every one of these steps. Multiple times. It’s boring. Real boring. Each story also has to show how the characters first learned about this stupid game. In each case, it’s through some text-message released novel called “Lonely Girl”. As described in the film, “Lonely Girl” is so dark and twisted that very few people would read it. Problem is, every single fucking person in the movie reads it. As do all of their friends. Whoops.

Easily 90% of this film are girls reading this story (or writing it, in the last installment) and talking about how great and dark and spooky it is. They’ll then ask everyone they know if they read “Lonely Girl” (they do) and if they’ve heard of a game called Hide and Seek Alone (they have). They’ll then play the game and something ever so slightly different will happen to them. This is essentially one twenty minute film with three alternate endings. Problem is, you have to watch that same twenty minute film three times just to see the different endings, which really aren’t all that different. Oh, and that twenty minute film is really poorly paced and translated, so you won’t really care enough to watch it once, yet alone three times.

It’s borderline unwatchable. As I feel I have a responsibility to never turn a movie I’m reviewing off, I finished it. If I was just watching this for fun though, this shit wouldn’t have lasted fifteen minutes. Why? Well, the first five minutes (which should be the hook which draws in the viewer) is a painful sequence where we watch a group of people discuss the game on an online message board. The choice in how this is shown is truly baffling, as instead of showing actual people with voiceovers or something along those lines, we get a purely black screen with each message typed out one line at a time. For five minutes. And it includes stupid online acronyms. It’s horrible. And, like everything in this goddamn movie, it happens three times.

The pacing is epically bad as well. The first story we get is easily the weakest, slowest and is also the longest. You won’t realize that this is an anthology film until the leads die off around the thirty minute mark and we go back to the message board. It’s a horrible revelation as you then have to watch everything you hated the past thirty minutes all over again. The second story is the strongest as we get the most detail behind what happens while the game is played, but the entire thing is ruined as the climax of this story is spoiled in the first story through an internet video. This should have started the film. The third story follows the author of “Lonely Girl”, which by this point we’ve been able to determine was killed while playing the game and, sure enough, she was killed while playing the game. Why is the story structured like this? It’s easily the worst possible way this film could have been organized. Despite being such a ripoff of “The Ring”, this movie doesn’t do the thing that film did best. There’s no tension built here at all. It’s one of the most predictable and least suspenseful horror films I’ve ever seen.

“Hide and Go Kill” is one of those rare movies that serves as a perfect illustration of everything that is wrong with the contemporary horror scene. It’s an uninspired rip-off of a far better, original film that came a decade late. The end product suggestions a lack of such basic film-making elements as story telling and pacing that make you question how it is that a film like this even got funding. Yet, there’s a sequel. So, if you think I’m upset now, check back next week when I tackle part two. For my sake, I’m hoping they learned some things between the two installments. But I’m not holding my breath.

HorrorNews

SYNOPSIS:

A blog on a mysterious website quickly spreads like wildfire, starting a dangerous online game. At 3:00 in the afternoon, a teddy bear stuffed with rice and nails is sunk into a bathtub. The lights go out and the player is required to stab the bear with the knife, then write their experiences in the blog. But lately the comments have taken a dark, demented turn, as if the players are being possessed.

REVIEW:

Director – Hitori Kakurenbo
Starring – Saki Yamaguchi, Aimirora

First off, I like the title. Good grabber. This Japanese horror film is yet another entry into the “what in the world are these teenagers thinking?” Although there are some creepy moments and some good tension as the kids meet their predictable demise, it’s just hard to feel sorry for any of them because they are tempting things that just should not be messed with.

It all starts with a serial mobile novel entitled “Lonely Girl.” Released chapter by chapter, it has garnered the attention of a whole lotta young folk, including students Midori and Fumika. They can’t wait for the next chapter to be released, but it has been some time. Who is this author and why the delay? One part of the series that is especially intriguing to everyone is a game called “Hide and Seek Alone.” And what are the rules to this strange yet somehow alluring game?

Not too difficult. Take a stuffed animal, say, a teddy bear, and take out all of the stuffing and replace it with rice. Sew it up nice and good with red string and give it a name. All right, now that you’ve done that, you have to wait until three o’clock in the morning. You take it into the bathroom, place it in a bowl of water and stab it with a knife while saying “Now you’re the devil.” Then it’s time to run to a closet and pray that the thing you just summoned doesn’t come and find you. Now what could possibly go wrong, I ask you?

Well, it seems the internet is a buzz over this, almost like an urban legend. Is it real? Did kids really die from trying this? Are you going to try this? I guess when put into the context of teenagers feeling like they are invincible, it’s understandable to want and try to scare yourself. Bloody Mary anyone?

Fumika has been feeling down lately. After being dumped by a guy she just slept with and teased by the other girls about it, she stops going to school and withdraws into the “Lonely Girl” novel. Her friend, Midori, doesn’t know what to make of her strange behavior. Things get worse when Midori has lunch with the same guy that just broke Fumika’s heart. Not a good idea she discovers when she steps on a thumbtack placed in her shoe by Fumika. What’s a little blood among friends.

It turns out that Fumika has played Hide and Seek Alone and has won several times. She wants Midori to play as well, but Midori wisely refuses. At first. But hey, why not try something crazy suggested by someone who just hurt you?

There are effective moments throughout, not to mention some really good creaking sounds as whatever it was that has been summoned moves about. Not something you want to run into, that’s for sure. I never thought of stuffed animals as creepy, that area usually dominated by clowns and marionettes, but now I’m not so sure. One good scene has Midori waking up in the middle of the night to turn all of the stuffed animals in her room around so they aren’t staring at her.

The acting is standard as the girls and guys act appropriately terrified. The plot moves along rather briskly and there is no real down time. One interesting thing that is done several times is that the screen will go to black and words are typed across the screen, like a chat room. We only see the names of who is typing as the screen remains black the whole time. This technique works in the sense that since we don’t see the people, it adds to the legend of the game because it feels like you’re hearing this from third parties who may or may not know the truth.

Hide and Go Kill is not a bad movie and is a respectable entry into the horror genre. I would suggest seeing it, though it rates more a rental than a purchase. But after viewing, please don’t go messing with things you shouldn’t be messing with.

Full Movie on FrightPix