The MANTAN editorial team has picked out some recommended films to enjoy in an air-conditioned theater during the summer holidays. Actor Miho Kanno will be introducing the horror film "About a Place in the Kinki Region" (directed by Koji Shiraishi), in which she co-stars with Eiji Akaso.
The original work is a novel of the same name by Sekin (KADOKAWA), the first chapter of which was posted on the novel website Kakuyomu in January 2023 and published in book form in August of the same year. It won first place in the 2024 edition of "This Horror is Amazing!" The story is directed by Shiraishi, who has also directed "Noroi" (2005), "Sadako vs. Kayako" (2016), and "Sayuri" (2024), with Sekin, the original author, also participating as a scriptwriter.
An editor of an occult magazine suddenly goes missing. Right before his disappearance, he seems to have been researching something by scraping together various pieces of information, including investigative materials from unsolved cases such as the disappearance of a young girl, a mass hysteria incident among junior high school students, urban legends, and a video streaming scandal at a haunted spot, as well as feature articles on mysterious phenomena and shelved notes from previous interviews. As his fellow editor, Ozawa Yuuki (Akaso), searches for him with writer Seno Chihiro (Kanno), they discover that all of these mysteries are connected to "a certain place in the Kinki region"... This is the story.
The film is structured like a documentary, with each mystery leading to more mysteries. You'll want to watch until the very end to see how the popular original work is adapted into a film. You can also enjoy the charms of "horror queen" Kanno.
