Don't Look Up
| Don't Look Up | |
|---|---|
| File:Joyû-rei.jpg | |
| Directed by | Hideo Nakata |
| Produced by | Koji Kobayashi Shigeki Oosawa Takenori Sentô Yasushi Tsuge |
| Written by | Screenplay: Hiroshi Takahashi Story: Hideo Nakata |
| Starring | Yûrei Yanagi Yasuyo Shirashima Kei Ishibashi Ren Ôsugi Takanori Kikuchi |
| Music by | Akifumi Kawamura |
| Cinematography | Takeshi Hamada |
| Edited by | Shuichi Kakesu |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Bandai Visual Company Bitters End EDKO Film Film Bank |
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Release dates
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March 2, 1996 |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Don't Look Up, known as Joyû-rei (女優霊?, lit. "Ghost Actress") in Japan, is a 1996 Japanese horror film directed by Hideo Nakata. The film received a Hollywood remake in 2009 directed by Fruit Chan and starring Rachael Murphy, Reshad Strik and Eli Roth.
Plot
Don't Look Up is about a film director and his crew who slowly go insane when the film set is haunted by the ghost of an actress who died while filming a TV show in the 1960s.
On the set of a dark war time drama at an old movie studio, a young director, Toshio Murai (Yanagi), is trying to complete his debut film. The two starring actresses, Hitomi Kurokawa and Saori Murakami, play sisters in his film. Murai has a crush on Hitomi (Shiroshima), the seasoned leading actress, and keeps a photo of her by his bed. The younger and less experienced actress, Saori (Ishibashi), is annoying and likes to have recess on the set. The production of the movie is consistently interrupted by strange occurrences and the cast and crew begin to get spooked.
When Murai reviews the shoot, he is shocked to see that scenes from an unreleased (and presumed destroyed) drama from years earlier are intermingled with his negatives. As Murai is watching his footage, the scene is interrupted by a film within a film of an unidentified actress on a movie set, with something that looks like a woman behind her, long black hair, pale skin, out of focus, laughing hysterically.
Murai is fascinated with the freaky footage, as it looks strangely familiar. The production shuts down for a formal investigation. Murai has only three days left to find out what is going on and finish the shoot.
Murai looks into his own past, and finds a frightening connection between the film he is shooting and the strange footage he has uncovered.
Cast
- Yūrei Yanagi - Toshio Murai / the director
- Yasuyo Shirashima - Hitomi Kurokawa / the seasoned actress
- Kei Ishibashi - Saori Murakami / the debuting actress
- Ren Osugi - Ootani / the cinematographer (as Ren Oosugi)
- Takanori Kikuchi - Masaru Hayama
- Hiroyuki Tanaka - Sekikawa (as Sabu)
- Reita Serizawa - Sadaoka
- Akira Hibino - Actor in the 1971 TV film footage
- Hirofumi Kobayashi - Shigeru Mochizuki / the lead actor
- Dan Li - Ghost actress
- Daisuke Iijima - Police detective
- Naomi Kojima - Actress in the 1971 TV film footage
- Katsunori Someya - Tomoyasu
- Yuuken Yoshida - Kasuya
- Toshie Negishi - Tokiko Tsutsumi / Hitomi's agent
See also
Remake
Hideo Nakata himself announced in February 2015 with his film Ghost Theatre, a remake of Ghost Actress.[1] He wrote the script and will direct Ghost Theatre.[2]
