Nami's (Megumi Okina who starred in Ju-On) been seeing things in her dreams and starts to create a videogame based on those things. Together with one of the game producers she travels out to an abandoned house, similar to what she saw in a dream. Once there they start to explore the house and Nami starts to have visions of herself being in that house as a child. And the deeper they go into the house, the more secrets starts to reveal.
 I kinda got my hopes up for St. John's Wort as I heard it was gonna be about video-games, that is horror games. Being a big fan of the Silent Hill series I figured it might be somewhat similar to that, at least it sounded cool to mix horror and the making of a horror game in a movie.
Unfortunatley I got pretty disappointed as the movie didn't turn out to be that cool, but instead quite boring and with no really rewarding scares either. I guess the actual idea behind the movie is pretty good but the way it came out did not deliver and it could've been done so much better.
Since the producer who's with Nami in the house has brought a video camera we get to see as he films stuff too, Blair Witch style. This could've been cool but looks kinda cheap and is most of the time quite annoying when it changes back and forth between normal camera to his video camera.
The acting which usually is ok when it comes to Japanese movies is quite poor here, not horribly bad but could also've been a lot better. Also the characters are kinda annoying and not well-developed at all so you feel nothing for them and this makes you also feel distant to the movie itself.
The house has a very eerie feeling to it and creates an excellent atmosphere, and when they walk around exploring room after room it's gets a little bit creepy. Unfortunately it ends there without ever delivering any genuine scares.
It's basically just a creepy atmosphere but never goes anywhere which brings everything down a notch as you sit on the edge of your seat waiting for something to happen but after a while you begin to realise it's never gonna happen.
It sure has a video game feel to it and I guess people who's into video games will appreciate this but it's not enough and only works for a short period of time.
Biggest problem with St. John's Wort seems to be that the makers have spent way too much time with technology, trying to create the video game feel and have spent a lot of time working with cameras, angles and new techniques instead of focusing on the actual script and story.
It's not bad, but it ranks pretty low when it comes to Japanese horror. If you're a fan of the genre it still might be worth to check out though.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Otogiriso
MOVIE YEAR: 2001
DIRECTOR: Shimoyama Ten
WRITING CREDITS: Shűkei Nagasaka, Goro Nakajima
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Megumi Okina, Yoichiro Saito, Koji Ookura
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 85 min
RATING: 5/10
St. John's Wort Website/IMDB Click here
St. John's Wort Trailer Click here
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