A girl named Kaoru recieves a mysterious letter that leads her to a small village in search of her missing brother. The people in the village resent her except for one chinese girl. And all the people in the village act really strange and seem to be obsessed with scarecrows. Strange things start to occur and is her brother really somewhere in the village and if so, what's he doing there?
Like a lot of other Japanese movies out there, Kakashi is based on a horror manga by Junji Ito (Uzumaki/Spiral), but even if it's a horror film per se I rather see it as a moody fantasy drama with a touch of horror. What I mean is that of course it's horror but that's only a small part of what the movie really is.
I know people who have watched this movie being sure of that it was a horror flick and then ended up being disapointed as it turned out it didn't have the amount of horror they first thought it would have. I'm saying this just as a warning, it's a good movie but don't get into it thinking it's super scary and similar to other more typical Japanese horror movies because it is not. With that said let's get on to what Kakashi's about.
 
It's a basic plot but that has more to it than what's told above, but everything can't be explained especially not with Kakashi, it's a movie you should watch without knowing too much about.
The village itself where the movie takes place is a small Japanese village with a lot of atmosphere to it, the movie has this eerie feeling to it without ever getting really scary.
Like I said earlier, you shouldn't watch this thinking it's just another horror flick because it's not. It's hard to recommend since I know a lot of people won't like it as it is very different but at least it's worth to give it a try. Also check out Norio Tsuruta's Premonition.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Scarecrow
MOVIE YEAR: 2001
DIRECTOR: Norio Tsuruta
WRITING CREDITS: Junji Ito, Ryuta Mitaku
GENRE: Horror, Fantasy
CAST: Maho Nonami, Grace Yip, Kou Shibasaki
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 86 min
RATING: 6/10
Kakashi Website/IMDB Click here
Kakashi Trailer Click here
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