Do you really want to be an actor this badly? There are few films that inspire this response. All I can say is when you see somebody on film milking blood from a nipple, you might ask this question, too. I got there an hour earlier when the film accidentally recreated Goodnight Moon … only evil.
Onpaku represents the classic failed horror scenario: you sense dead people in the house? Leave, idiot. But I’m getting ahead of myself; there’s just so much to dislike about this film, it seems silly to pick on failed logistics. In Onpaku, a single Chinese woman, Sarah (Josie Ho), goes searching Japan for some real estate and for reasons known only to the screenwriter, keeps ending up in haunted houses.
If you were this woman’s real estate agent, wouldn’t you be at least a tad embarrassed? I mean, a monied foreigner comes to your country looking to buy some real estate and you set her up in a b&b without the b … or the b. Here ya’ go, ma’am; it’s a creepy abandoned shack without power or running water … and there might be scary homeless people living inside as well.
And, as the woman, wouldn’t your reaction be: “get me to a hotel?” Barring that, how about, “take me to a car rental place so I can rent a car and sleep in it?”
Well, it turns out the creepy powerless house with creepy powerless fixtures on the creepy powerless block is creepy. Go figure. I’d say Sarah’s sleep is interrupted by ghosts and crap, but I seriously doubt she got any sleep. Luckily, the director was making bad choices about lighting and editing so I never could really tell. One thing I did learn from this film is that anything can look sadder if correctly (or incorrectly 
as the case may be) shot.
And then, Sarah doesn’t leave. In fact, Sarah returns to spend another creepy night in — look, if you’re gonna make such stupid decisions, you don’t deserve our support. Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the “revelations” or the stomach-churning stuff.
Onpaku is an unpleasant watch. It starts unpleasant; it ends unpleasanter … and was unpleasant in-between. I respect it for fully understanding its genre, but little else. The movie is about a Chinese woman looking for a residence in Japan … and finding the Grudge, the Ring, and the Manson Family all in one. Cuz, you know, Japan. Onpaku is a representative of Hong Kong cinema and if you think besmirching Japan was just a coincidence I have a bridge to sell you. I recommend this film to no one; not even the people who made it.
A Hong Kong woman found herself wanting
To buy a foreign home for the flaunting
So she went to Japan
Which screwed with her plan
Come for sushi and stay for the haunting
Not Rated [read: R, very hard R], 98 Minutes
Director: Shugo Fujii
Writer: Shugo Fujii
Genre: Stomach churning
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The director’s mom … I think
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Me
