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Two stories make up Campus Horror Stories. Episode One tells of the people's
belief in "doppelgangers," beings whose spirits are able to roam at will to satisfy their own desires.
Asaji is such a being -- outwardly she's a normal high school student. Asaji is attracted to a classmate, Ryoji Yoshino. Asaji's supposed spirit makes nightly carnal visits to Ryoji who helplessly yields to the flesh although he truly loves his sweetheart, Mariko. But Asaji seems to have the power to be anywhere anytime, so she sets her jealous mind to eliminate every and any who gets in the way. Episode Two dwells
on the mysterious deaths in a neighborhood, and of strange happenings in a haunted condominium where classmates Naoko and Kazuhiko live in separate units. All units with
numbers ending in "5" seems cursed.
Kazuhiko photographs places and events in order to unravel the mystery, especially when the weird developments affect Naoko who lives in Room 505.
One horror movie after another -- that seems to be the trend in Asian moviemaking these
days. After seeing five or so of these, you tend to mix them up into one unidentifiable mass, and no one will condemn you for swearing never to see another Asian horror
movie again, ever! Campus Horror Stories
can be lumped into that unidentifiable mass of supposed hair-raisers that might succeed only in raising your eyebrows as you grope your way to the Exit halfway through the movie. Both episodes have a story to tell, but not without loopholes. Both utilize the usual tricks to startle the audience, but due to their triteness fail to frighten them to the bone. Editing swings between good and poor, and the lighting is flawed. The lead actors are all young -- they're supposed to be campus people, remember? -- although they're quite perfectly cast for their roles.
Our main objection to Campus Horror Stories
and movies of such ilk is the absence of God in the entire production. Given almost unlimited power here are evil spirits which come in the form of ghosts or people. These entities scare people to the point of illness or death, and the appalling thing is people to get scare witless and succumb to the evil presence with hardly a fight. They don't even remember to pray. In Episode One, everybody the evil spirit dislikes gets to die; in Episode Two, the (female) ghost kills so many people in the haunted units until is corpse is discovered. The intelligent viewer will ask so many questions that
Campus Horror Stories can not answer because it was never in its agenda make the audience understand or transcend fear.
(Date Reviewed: 22 July 2005)
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