Effectively creepy exercise, with a punch-to-the-heart kind of ending that harks back to THE ORPHANAGE, PRAY is well worth seeing. Audiences whose tastes have been dulled by decades of worthless slasher flicks will find it nigh impossible to appreciate something genuinely scary. As with many of the Asian imports, PRAY often relies on understatement and sheer creepiness to enthrall- and it works. The fact that the kidnapping victim turns out to be a young girl ALREADY DEAD is, in and of itself, enough of a twist to move PRAY to the front of the (must-see) line: it pulls you in and holds your attention (unless you have the attention span of a fruit fly) and, in the end, delivers on an emotional level. What more can one ask from a fright film...?

Mitsuru and Maki(Tetsuji Tamayama & Asami Mizukawa)are looking for a big pay day fast and kidnap a girl asking for a heavy ransom, but are in for a wallop of a surprise..the girl they kidnapped is said by her family to be dead for exactly a year on the letter!! Well, it isn't as simple as that in this intriguing ghost story whose ambition outweighs it's execution. The setting is a now-closed down school where our couple believe to be a good enough place to hold a child hostage until they get paid. But, as the story develops, we get an understanding of who this spooky girl really is. But, not just that..we find out who REALLY done the selecting to begin with. Right away the girl shows an eerie attachment to Mitsuru. She doesn't want him to leave her but often plays disappearing acts with Mitsuru and Maki. The first fifteen or so minutes shows them trying to find her throughout the halls, but we soon find that it isn't they who do the finding but she who allows them to see her. Soon, Mitsuru's "buddies" come to the school, but how they got their information of this location comes in play with a plot twist that changes the whole relationship between our couple's life together. An important thematic element..Yasuda(Mitsuyoshi Shinoda)is the major source of conflict and his relationship with a certain girl(s) will come to major importance as the film comes to a close. Yasuda puts pressure on Mitsuru to get the ransom so that he can pay for drugs. This shows how far Mitsuru has sunk in his life. A key turning point in the film comes when we actually find who this girl really is, what happened to the girl Mitsuru and Maki were supposed to have kidnapped, and the reasons behind several murders and spooky goings-on in the school.The setting and it's selection, not to mention the girl's fascination with Matsuru's "not leaving" are key components in the overall scheme of things in this ghost story. The deaths that occur to certain characters who get what's coming to them is secondary to a surprise ending which gears more towards a sad closing between two people who make peace with themselves. That final fifteen minutes will probably not work for most people because it's quite a mood changer that really creates a bit of an unevenness, but overall the film provides some good creepy moments as characters search dark hallways as something hiding in the distance lurks. Overall the film doesn't quite hit the high marks like it wishes, and we question who was actually killing all the people in the film.

I know the Asian Wave of Filmic Horror long ago crashed to shore and receded into the murky depths of mediocrity, but I had pinned big hopes on this flick. On paper, it seemed to have all the right clichés--an abandoned school as a setting, a ghostly girl lurking about the place, questionable characters needing a good supernatural come-uppance.Well, skip this one. It's weak--the characters are thin and irritating, the setting is samey and gets tiring after 30 minutes, and the ghostly girl isn't ghostly at all. There are some nice choice effects here and there (some blood, a decaying corpse), but nothing surprising or jolting or even impressive. In fact, it occurred to me that this film must have REALLY been shot on a shoestring and very quickly, considering it practically takes place in one uninteresting location and includes very little in terms of atmospheric effects. The ending tries desperately to tug at the heart strings, but it simply comes across as sappy and (transparently) manipulative. The plot goes round and round--the circumlocution is evident as quickly as the 15-minute mark--and it goes nowhere for the entire run.Hmmm, and I just ordered "Cello" from YesAsia…will somebody stop me, please?

Japanese ghost story movies tend to be long on atmosphere, chills and short,sharp shocks, and short on coherent plot development and characterization. Pray is no exception. Actually, when you think about it, those are really the defining qualities of ghost stories everywhere. The point of the ghost story is to scare, not involve you in an uplifting literary experience. Pray does its job well, just don't expect it to be more than it needs to be. A group of young hoodlums does a kidnapping caper but things begin to fall apart when the victim turns out to be something spooky. The film keeps several plot developments hanging around unexplained until the end, and this helps keeps the suspense level up. There is a lot of running around in dark hallways and in and out of empty rooms with the wind whistling eerily in the background. There is not much gore unless the sight of a severed hand is particularly disturbing for you. The denouement is a little flat when the nature of the creepy little girl is explained but it's very Japanese.