Moving on in the Tales of Terror series, Tales of Terror Vol.2 are, just like Vol.1, stories from a tv show that tell tales based on true supernatural encounters. In this second volume, there are 8 short stories. This DVD continues episodes from Part 1 with another 8 episodes from 9 to 16.
9. Examination Room 3, Part 1, (Akio Yoshida)
A guy takes his girlfriend to what seems like an abandoned hospital, and there he tries to get it on with her, something that she doesn't seem to be interested in. So she runs away, and then when going after her, the guy all of a sudden hears her talking to someone. He stumbles upon a room that is labeled Examination Room 3 and there he sees his girlfriend sitting on a chair, talking to herself. He wonders what she's doing and pulls her out of there, and later on he gets a phone call from her were she says she's in the hospital again...
10. Examination Room 3, Part 2, (Akio Yoshida)
The guy heads over to the hospital and enters Examination Room 3, the same place as where he last found his girlfriend. He sees her laying on a bed and talking loudly to someone. Then she invites him to join her in the bed, but this time he's not up for any sexual adventures. Fast forward a week, a month, a year...I actually have no idea. The guy and the girl run into each other on the street, (I guess they broke up after the incident at the hospital). The guy asks her how she has been, and she says she still goes to the hospital.
Freaky? Not really, but this one was better since it lasted longer. I don't know why they bothered with splitting them up into two different parts, since they both last only for around 9 minutes together. It was quite all right and had a creepy touch to it, but did unfortunately not deliver any scares.
11. Forgotten Item (Ryo Nanba)
A girl has just broken up with her cheating boyfriend, and has moved to a new apartment and changed her phone number. She soon starts getting strange phone calls from someone saying 'Give it back', and then hangs up. It keeps going like that every night for some time till she decides to change her number. But that doesn't seem to help, she still get those calls. One day someone's banging on her door and tries to get in, but of course the girl doesn't open. She figures that 'Give it back' meant that someone left something in the apartment, and the girl sets out to find what it could be that the person is looking for.
Now, this was a good short story, and even if it was really short, it got freaky really fast. The very ending takes away everything that was scary before so that was a bit of a bummer, but still, it was a pretty good story.
12. Video (Hirokatsu Kihara)
A girl is invited to some party (just for girls) and arrives early and seems to be the first one there, that is except for the hostess. The girl who has invited her is cooking and tells her to go and watch some tv while waiting. In the VCR, she finds a tape and puts that on, and suddenly in the reflection of the tv, she sees people sitting behind her. She turns around but there's none there. She looks at the tv, and again she sees people sitting behind her. When walking out in the hallway, she sees that it's full of shoes, but that no people are actually in the apartment.
It sounds ok, but it wasn't really that good. Now, these events have supposably occured for real, and if that would've happened to me, it would definitely have ruined my pants for sure. But just watching it on tv wasn't very effective.
13. Drop Of Blood (Eiji Arakawa)
A girl goes to some place for a job interview, but when she arrives at the place there's no one there. She figures that she's early, but then she gets a strange phone call, and at the same time she sees that the clock strikes three which means that she was an hour late. The person on the end of the phone hangs up on her. She leaves her resume, and when she walk out she has some blood on her cheek.
Okelidokeli, this one was just too weird. I was tired when watching it but I don't think it would've mattered. If you get it, drop me an email.
14. Enlightenment (Takashi Shimizu)
A girl goes through some of her old things and in some kind of box, she finds a sketch book which reads; Not to be read till you grow up, or something similar to that. Since she is grown up by now, she reads it, and it's something about her current boyfriend that she seemed to know when she was a kid.
The subtitles stopped working halfway through, and since my Japanese is non-existant, I didn't get this one (either). Anyway, it seemed more like a drama with no sudden scares or anything like that. All it had that was a bit freaky was the actual music which consisted of strange noises, although it was more weird than freakish. Subtitles or no subtitles, this one didn't do anything for me.
15. Waiting Time (Takashi Shimizu)
A guy is in some sort of hotel building or something, and while he waits around there, he suddenly sees a little girl that stares at him. Later on when he walk around in the building, the same girl appears again and then disappear. She keeps calling him, and the guy gets more and more freaked out.
Ehhh, this one was really strange and actually quite lame. It had what was supposed to be some scares and tried to create some creepy atmosphere, but it didn't work at all. After a little while it got a bit more intense and then suddenly it was cut off.
This one and story no.14 came from the same man who gave us Marebito and Ju-on, and watching these two weird stories makes you not think any higher of him, rather the opposite. Ok, that it's hard to make a scary story that can only last for 3-5 minutes all together. But even so, it felt kinda meaningless watching this, (even if 5 minutes is not a huge waste of time).
16. Off The Shelf (Akio Yoshida)
A man comes home from work and sits down to eat his dinner and starts talking to himself. He says that he misses his family, that seem to be in some other city, but that he's not alone where he lives now. His neighbour starts banging on the walls, and the man says he has some crazy neighbour. He then walks into his neighbours room, and some guy is hanging upside down from the sealing, but the man doesn't seem to notice that. He then goes back to his apartment and keeps repeating that he's not alone.
Yeah I know, it makes no real sense, but this one was still quite funny to watch. It's not scary but instead more comical. But just like most of these stories, it was weird and too short for one to really be able to get into.
Tales of Terror Vol.2 was slightly better than Vol.1. Maybe because with volume one you didn't know what to expect, and so it became a bit of a let-down. When started to watch Vol.2, I knew that the stories would be short and never expected it to be anything else, and that somehow made the outcome feel a little bit better than last time. Still though, the stories are too short and it's hard to get into them and get something from them before they are over. But I got more into it this time, so maybe Vol.3 will have an even better effect.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Tales of Terror from Tokyo 2
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: See next the title of each story
WRITING CREDITS: n/a
GENRE: Horror, Supernatural
CAST: Uncredited
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 55 min
RATING: 4/10
Tales Of Terror Vol 2 Website/IMDB Click here
Tales Of Terror Vol 2 Trailer Click here
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