Kimyo na sakasu (The Maid)

(2005) ***

Rosa, an eighteen-year-old girl moves from the Philippines to Singapore to work as a maid for the Teo family. The couple has a son, Ah Soon who is mentally challenged. Rosa arrives during the Seventh Month in the Chinese calendar, a time every year when they believe the Gates of Hell are open and that they must offer gifts and perform rituals to please the Spirits so they will leave peacefully when the gate recloses. Rosa, being ignorant to these rituals unintentionally offends a spirit. She begins seeing spirits everywhere she turns, it’s like being on a bad trip that never seems to end.

The Teo’s tell her to just ignore the spirits and when the Seventh Month is over they will disappear. She tries but she feels someone is beckoning to her. After finding out the Teo’s previously had another Filipino girl named Esther Santos living with them, she proceeds to uncover what turns out to be a big and scary ‘can o’ worms’ involving a dark secret that her employers have been hiding for quite some time. Now she must get away or end up paying the ultimate price.

First of all I need to tell you that the sound track of the dvd is just slightly off. It must have gotten screwed up with the transfer from region 2 to region 1 or something. In other words, the scary ghost pops up then the scary ghost sound happens. The girl silently screams, the scene changes and we then hear the scream. Why did I continue to watch this? Well, the story sounded really cool and I’ve been waiting to watch this movie for a long time. It wasn’t so off that you didn’t know what was going on but it definitely took away from the scare factor and it was actually pretty comical at times. Someone takes a nosedive off of a building, lands and a few seconds later we hear the splat, hysterical.

The ghosts are pretty run of the mill, most don’t have any make-up they just look kinda blue. The thing is, they pop up just about everywhere. Poor Rosa just arrives in Singapore all excited about finally getting to see more of the world and she winds up in a living hell, literally. One living person gets possessed and goes insane and that is pretty freaky.

The Esther ghost is eerie and seems to show up randomly throughout the house. All told I thought the movie was pretty cool even with the sound messed up. It wasn’t the best as far as J-horror goes but it was worth the watch nevertheless.