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JOY-RE~1

Don't Look Up is a 1996 Japanese horror film directed by Hideo Nakata. The film is set in a film studio where a war film is being made.

The film was made by Hideo Nakata while trying to fund production for his documentary film about director Joseph Losey. It was not a success in Japan, but prompted an English-language remake in 2009 which was directed by Fruit Chan. The film also influenced the creative choices Nakata would have for his popular film Ring in 1998.

Plot[]

First-time director Toshio Murai is trying to finish principal photography for a drama. When screening the result of the day’s shoot, Murai and the crew find that their negatives are intermingled with undeveloped footage from an old film. In the footage, a pale, long-haired woman in white is seen standing in the background of a scene, then laughing hysterically, out of focus.

Murai begins seeing the ghost on location, while his seasoned lead actress Hitomi Kurokawa, on whom he has a crush, senses a presence that repeats her lines during a reading. Murai learns that crewmembers have reported a ghostly sighting in their studio during a previous shoot and witnesses Kurokawa’s agent fleeing in fear after handing her a protective charm. One day, during a take, Murai sees the ghost lurking behind teenage actor Saori Mochizuki when she is playing around on the rigs above the set. She suddenly falls to her death, temporarily shutting down production.

Murai learns that the old film to which the undeveloped footage belonged was not released because the actress in the scene had fallen to her death during production, too. However, he remembers being terrified of the film when he saw it on TV as a child and notices that it was shot in the same studio he and his crew are using now.

When shooting resumes, Kurokawa sees an apparition of Mochizuki and the actress replacing Mochizuki gets possessed. She falls into a hysterical frenzy. Afterward, more crewmembers report ghostly apparitions suggesting that the project is cursed and urge Murai to shut it down. However, he insists that they finish. After seeing the ghost stalking Kurokawa’s character in the footage of the day, Murai fears for her life and rushes back to the studio. There, he is tormented by the ghost, who ends up dragging him away while laughing hysterically.

Following Murai’s disappearance, the crew struggle to finish the film. When visiting Murai’s apartment with a crewmember to look for clues, Kurokawa realises in horror as she notices the ghost through a mirror.

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