I’m a sucker for Japanese horror and anthologies, so any time I see one, I feel the strung urge to watch it. Scrolling through Amazon Prime, I spot Kidan: Piece of Darkness. It looked similar enough to other great J-horror anthologies that I’ve seen here, so of course I put it on my Watch List. I was expecting some mildly spooky content, and I got that, but there were surprisingly some points that definitely made me reconsider watching it in my dark basement… alone… at night. Spoilers ahead!
First, a quick rundown of the stories. Done in an ABCs of Death style — each segment done by a different director — Kidan tells 10 stories with a wrap-around of a woman reading “listener letters.”
| SEGMENT | STORY | HOT TAKE |
| Over-taking | Ghost-hunting friends talk about their finds while driving. They get what they’re looking for. | Mostly OK. Nothing more. |
| Shadow Man | Violent shadow figure attacks a grandmother in her dreams. | Scary noises are scary. |
| Tailed | A man’s ghostly stare follows a girl. | Eerie feelings all-around, like Lake Mungo. |
| Looking Together | When two teachers hook up then break up, one doesn’t take it very well. | Actually kind of funny. |
| The Woman in Red | Telling the story of the legendary Woman in Red proves fatal for a group of teens. | A great finish to a story we’ve probably heard before. |
| Empty Channel | A student finds out it’s rude to peep in on private conversations heard on empty radio channels. | Payoff was not as great as I was expecting. |
| Whose Kid | Teachers are haunted by a ghost in the school. | Tired ghost-in-a-school story. A skippable segment. |
| Let’s Carry On | A group of children find out why they shouldn’t play in a graveyard. | On the better side of “meh.” |
| Thief | A woman’s baby disappears, a ghost boy reappears. | Those eerie vibes again! |
| Sealed | A cheating boyfriend gets his comeuppance. | If you like Ju-on/The Grudge, you will like this. Also awesome ghost effects! |
Overall, I did like Kidan a lot. To be honest, many of the Japanese anthologies I watch are pretty in the middle, not terrible but definitely rehashing a lot of tropes we see all the time. It gets monotonous, and those segments turn out to be less interesting than my phone screen. Segments that are new though, are amazing. Kidan is only slightly different in that all of these segments, old story or new, have some factor that makes the entire thing watchable. Granted, there were only three major scares in this 100-minute movie, but they were amazing scares. I won’t spoil them, but we’re looking at “Shadow Man,” “The Woman in Red,” and “Sealed,” here.
But that doesn’t mean the rest of the movie was tame. As is customary in J-horror, Kidan is rife with scenes that evoke a truly powerful eeriness that may rival (or even overtake) the jumps. For instance, “Tailed” is about a man’s ghostly apparition silently staring at a girl as she walks home from school. She never forgot his face, and even years later, she can still feel his cold eyes following her. Nothing jumps out at you, and there really isn’t more to the story. But the entire time, you too can feel the man’s stare. As mentioned in the table above, “Tailed” gives big Lake Mungo vibes; there is a point at the end of the segment when you know the man is looking at the girl (or you in the audience, depending on how you see it), but we don’t see him immediately until the zoom-in. I knew that was coming based on narration, but I couldn’t find where he was until the reveal. So I’m sitting there, beginning to panic more and more as I’m frantically searching for this regular-looking man. I love J-horror because, with the exception of onryō like Sadako (Ringu/The Ring) and Kayako (Ju-on/The Grudge), ghosts and spirits tend to look like completely normal people doing completely normal things, like just standing there. You wouldn’t be able to tell they were dead until they disappeared. It’s unsettling, to say the least.
I’d also like to point out that Kidan has wonderful effect work! It ends with a banger in “Sealed.” A woman begs her cheating ex-boyfriend to pick up his remaining things from her apartment when she notices her closet door mysteriously keeps opening by itself. She decides to investigate and finds his old suitcase inside… and something else. In this story, she ties a ribbon around the door knobs to keep them closed, but sees that something is pulling it undone. When she opens the doors to see what pulled it, a quintessential onryō drags itself across the floor, back into the suitcase. The set-up with the string-pulling is a great tension-builder, only to be topped off with a cool-ass ghost reveal. Smart decision to have this be the last segment. I liked this especially because we don’t see anything that takes away from the effect, whether it be wires pulling objects, fabric panels hiding equipment, or what have you. It’s believable and not overdone.
Regardless of the outcome, I knew I would love Kidan: Piece of Darkness. It’s something familiar to a J-horror fan, just done better. You get your grudge-ghosts, you get your urban legends, you get your “slice of life” student stories, and you get some scares that you wouldn’t normally see in a Japanese horror flick. Everything is a plus! In the realm of Asian anthologies, Kidan is a top choice.
What do you think of Asian anthologies? Let us know in the comments!
