School Ghost Stories


School Ghost Stories is a 1995 Japanese film directed by Hideyuki Hirayama. The film is the first of the School Ghost Stories features, and was followed by School Ghost Stories 2 in 1996.

Plot

In an elementary school, a girl named Mika disappears mysteriously after following the sound of laughter into the bathroom. She was known to have 2 golden rings that "disappeared" from her tray. The rumors of the school being haunted, strange things happening around 4:44 AM and the disappearance of children soon emerge, but Mika's older sister and her friends decide to go after Mika despite this. They soon find out that all the rumors are true, and now they not only have to find the girl, but also save themselves from the malevolent ghosts that haunt the school building.

Background

In the mid-1980s, a schoolteacher named Toru Tsunemitsu began to share ghost stories with his young students. Tsunemitsu originally began his focus on ghost stories around town, but found an unusually large amount of them centered on school. He began to narrow his focus to school-based ghost stories, and asked his students for them, which led to his receiving over 160 stories in two weeks.
In 1990, the first volume of these stories by Tsunemitsu was released under the title Gakkō no Kaidan. The stories were aimed at children and published by Kodansha and became very popular in Japan. The stories were later adapted into television where they were bought by Kansai Television who televised a six episode miniseries in 1994. In 1995, a film adaptation was made.

Release

School Ghost Stories was released in Japan on July 8, 1995 where it was distributed by Toho. The film is the first of the School Ghost Stories features, and was followed by School Ghost Stories 2 in 1996. School Ghost Stories earned a distribution income of in Japan, and reached a total box office gross of in Japan.

Reception

David Kalat, author of J-Horror: The Definitive Guide to The Ring, The Grudge and Beyond, described the series as being "packed with two scoops of wild, surrealistic visions, but no real sense of menace. A threadbare and uninteresting plot holds together 100-some minutes' worth of weird but mostly non-threatening spooks."