Pray (2005)

one of my absolute favorites!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Effectively creepy exercise, with a punch-to-the-heart kind of ending that harks back to THE ORPHANAGE, PRAY is well worth seeing. Audiences whose tastes have been dulled by decades of worthless slasher flicks will find it nigh impossible to appreciate something genuinely scary. As with many of the Asian imports, PRAY often relies on understatement and sheer creepiness to enthrall- and it works. The fact that the kidnapping victim turns out to be a young girl ALREADY DEAD is, in and of itself, enough of a twist to move PRAY to the front of the (must-see) line: it pulls you in and holds your attention (unless you have the attention span of a fruit fly) and, in the end, delivers on an emotional level. What more can one ask from a fright film...?

Purei (2005) ** (out of 4) Japanese horror film has an interesting set up but half way through the film hits a wall and never recovers. Two drug dealers in desperate need of cash decide to kidnap a young girl and ask for a ransom. When the dealers call the girls parents they learn that the girl died a year earlier. I had really high hopes for this ghost film and things started off well but went straight downhill pretty quickly. The storyline is very interesting and should have made for a creepy film but the director never really builds any atmosphere and the screenplay is full of annoying characters that it becomes hard to really care what happens. The first twenty-minutes contain a few creepy scenes but after this the film relies on flashbacks and a side story with the girls parents, which move at a snails pace.

Japanese ghost story movies tend to be long on atmosphere, chills and short,sharp shocks, and short on coherent plot development and characterization. Pray is no exception. Actually, when you think about it, those are really the defining qualities of ghost stories everywhere. The point of the ghost story is to scare, not involve you in an uplifting literary experience. Pray does its job well, just don't expect it to be more than it needs to be. A group of young hoodlums does a kidnapping caper but things begin to fall apart when the victim turns out to be something spooky. The film keeps several plot developments hanging around unexplained until the end, and this helps keeps the suspense level up. There is a lot of running around in dark hallways and in and out of empty rooms with the wind whistling eerily in the background. There is not much gore unless the sight of a severed hand is particularly disturbing for you. The denouement is a little flat when the nature of the creepy little girl is explained but it's very Japanese.

It was a really good movie. It kept me guessing and trying to figure out what happens. A few things weren't answered though, so I counted against that. It wasn't very gory at all (lest someone believes blood to be very gory). If it were longer and had more scenes I believe it would be way better. Being a 2005 movie the computer graphic parts could have been way better, there were some cheesy parts that just made me giggle. I'm certainly not used to Japanese horror movies, because American's rely mainly on suspense. They should have given a few of those actors a bit more air time, and not everyone should have died. The main guy should have gotten out of it alive, but thats my opinion (he was cute after all). I rented the movie, but I certainly would buy it any chance I got. I like it enough though, two thumbs up.