Four college students conducted social practice during the summer vacation and went to remote villages to shoot documentaries to investigate folk ghost culture. However, as the investigation deepened, strange things happened frequently and they gradually realized that things were far less simple than they thought.
This one was a pretty solid short film. Like most found-footage films, the setup here is quite important as the opening introduction about the group getting together for their mission starts off quite nicely. While brief, we get a sense of the personalities of the individuals on the trip and their intent of finding the truth about the mysterious sightings shown in the area. The resulting interviews with the locals documenting their slew of sightings and experiences about ghosts, demons, and mysterious supernatural encounters around them complete the setup required for this type of genre film. These quick interviews are somewhat realistic and grounded experiences that people who live out in the countryside might encounter that would lead them to believe in the supernatural by recounting personal experiences that are kept to unnatural scenarios or strange sightings while connecting a piece of folklore to the equation as an explanation.
However, this setup also causes the shorts' only real drawback. By focusing on the interview portion with the locals trying to capture their experiences, the first half can lose the viewer rather easily. Since none of the locals are named or structured together where their encounters are of similar situations, it's easy to get lost in the background of random talking heads spouting stories. As these are also brief snippets of the individuals' experiences being related back before cutting to someone else who tells their own story before finally getting back to finish off the first story. With no recreations or reenactments of the situations described, this section can wear out the repetitive nature of these stories into a dull slough since that's all we get to see happening. The finale switch back to the camera crew's encounter with something in the village brings things back to the found-footage aspect but it’s all over so quickly with the fade to black almost immediately after something's happened, cutting the momentum of the film off at a crucial point. Otherwise, there's not much to dislike with the short.
This review was originally published on Asian Movie Pulse and is gratefully reprinted with their cooperation.
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