Shirome (2010)
Premise: Where to begin. This is a movie starring an actual (shivers) Japanese idol band from like 15 years ago, Momoiro Clover. It is found footage by the same guy that brought us the amazing Noroi (an actual masterpiece of the genre), but uhm, let’s say this one must have cost a fraction of Noroi’s budget. A tiny, tiny fraction. Like, I’m sure the idols never got any money from this (because haha, Japan, am I rite? like they’re paying the poor girls) but the rest of the people involved must have got like, a sandwich or something.
But anyway, the premise: this is filmed like it was the behind-the-scenes of one of those Japanese variety shows that star idols (shivers). The girls are told they’ll have to visit a supposedly haunted location where a local deity (“Shirome”, a big butterfly) will grant them their wish - if they really believe it and want it with all of their hearts.
Of course the girls are not in on the joke so this is kind of a “hidden camera just for laffs” type of deal, except since this is japan we’re talking about it is a hundred times crueler than it needs to be.
Under 90 minutes? Yeah, but it really feels longer than tha because literally nothing happens for most of the movie.
Do they say the title? Constantly, and also they need to say it to get their wish!
One sentence review: Those poor girls.
Rating: This wasn’t amazingly good, to be very honest. There are parts that are hilarious (like how SCARED the poor girls are of this extremely normal looking guy that is only brought up to tell them spooky stories), but even though I’ve been known to enjoy a lot of those wacky japanese tv shows, too often this felt unnecessary cruel to the girls. Chances are they could tell this was all a setup because, after all, it is a very very common trope on variety shows there, but at some point you just feel bad for them being so scared…
A simple way to improve it: Let’s uhm, try to cast adults the next time or since we are at it let’s just skip the whole idol thing. I had only heard about the movie and I thought they were older, it felt really gross when they started to introduce themselves and they gave their ages. Agh!
Trivia about the IMDb trivia movie, I guess:
Apparently this movie was recorded as actual promotional material for the band, and apparently they did get a big following after this, so I guess there are things I am not meant to understand, ever.
