"Not a bad film, and Hamaguchi's eye for composition was still evident more than ten years ago. At the same time though, the "edge" and intelligence of his latest works is not particularly visible here, in a film that can be described as mediocre

This is a student movie with a slightly higher budget, and you can tell in all manners of ways. It has one named actor, and they put him to good use, but he is not the central antagonist or protagonist. The movie premise allows for a found footage look, but that does not salvage it. The main problem is that the two separate narratives in the movie are not sufficiently tied together until the last moment or even then. It's implied but you don't see the connection, and you can therefore not build an internal rule set to allow you to build tension. It just seems random and capricious. It's not as bad as it could have been, but it's certainly not very good.

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