Hide and Go Kill (2008) Review

 

Summary (No Spoilers):

Hide and Go Kill is a movie based on a creepy game of hide and seek in Japan, which is played alone. The game spreads online through chat forums, making it more popular. However, failure to follow the rules of the game has dangerous consequences.

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In-Depth Review (Spoilers Ahead!):

The game of Hide and Go Seek Alone is one many might be familiar with, as it was popular online and a great way to scare friends. The necessary rituals for the game are a bit complicated, and any single part handled incorrectly might be at risk of one's life (well, in theory). And how might that work? Well, here are the steps!

Take a stuffed doll (usually a teddy bear), give it a name, cut the doll open, fill its stomach with rice, and sew the doll up with red thread and wrap it around the doll. This is said to bind the spirit (allegedly). Next, fill a basin with water and wait until 3AM exactly to place the doll in the water. Until then, there's more prep to do: fill a glass of saltwater and prepare the way to end the ritual, which is taking a sip of saltwater and spitting it out while pouring the cup of water on the doll. And be sure to turn out all the lights except for the TV. With all that prep done, it's time to get chased by a pissed off spirit trapped in a doll!

The movie follows these rules closely, and they are shown a lot throughout the three sections of the story, which is pretty nostalgic as someone who used to hear how to play this game all the time when reading creepypastas online. And it definitely operates off of nostalgia, as much of the story takes place inside of a chat room for lonely people who play Hide and Go Seek Alone. These lonely people find this takes away their loneliness, but as the stories show, it also drains them of energy even as they confront fear (in their eyes, at least) because it's a super unhealthy way to deal with the problems in life.

The first story follows two high school best friends who are really into this story called Lonely Girl. But one of the girls starts to act strangely after her boyfriend dumps her, insisting on playing a game called Hide and Go Seek Alone. The main girl is worried about her friend and the growing eye-bags, a concern only worsened by the revenge-seeking behavior of her friend and the madness taking over her (including threatening to kill some high school bullies with a box cutter and sticking a tack in the main girl's shoe). 

The friend keeps insisting the main girl has to play Hide and Go Seek Alone, but the main girl has already had an unpleasant paranormal experience with a creepy video online of some strange demonic figure captured on film, so it takes a while to get her to play.

The main girl plays the game as her best friend taunts her over the cell phone, but she's really bad at following rules, so instead of using the saltwater she decides to have a mental breakdown and stab a bunch of cute stuffed animals thrown about by the spirit.

This does nothing to help her against the spirit, who possesses her, allowing her to make her way to her best friend's house. When she arrives, she finds her best friend has hung herself, and there's a lot of bruising around her neck which makes the state of her body seem like it might have been there for some time. Was her best friend even the one urging her on the whole time?

The main girl acknowledges none of this as she steps past, still repeating her friend's name as she climbs over the balcony railing and throws herself off with a hilariously bad splat sound effect.

The second part now opens with two boys and one girl hanging out. One of the boys admits to having played Hide and Go Seek Alone, and he looks like crap from the lack of sleep, but he's insistent on recording the game and catching the spirit on camera, even when his friends protest. 

They all set up the cameras as the tired boy preps everything for starting the game, getting everything done right by 3AM. However, the cameras and the presence of two more people alters the game. When the three of them split up, it all starts going to shit pretty quickly. The spirit kills them all one after another, aided in part by the presence of the cameras, which she uses to find the girl and kill her. This was also seen in the past story, which cements the progression of the story as going back in time.

That is made even clearer when the last story follows a pretty unhappy young woman who might be a student teacher (as it's not very clear from the subtitles). She hates romances, so she documents her life and how hard it is over her blog, but then she starts to play Hide and Go Seek Alone when she sees a link to it.  

This makes this poor lonely woman go down a path of unhealthy obsession, documenting all of her life-threatening attempts at playing this game on her blog and developing a base of blog followers as she begins to write the story Lonely Girl, now inspired by her many games of cat and mouse with a possessed doll. 

After thirty attempts, the woman gets a brilliant idea and decides to extend an invitation to play Hide and Go Seek Alone with her blog followers, so a bunch of them set up the game and get to playing. But in the excitement of the whole thing, the woman forgets her glass of salt water in the kitchen, which her blog followers all become very stressed about as this means she cannot stop the game.

The woman has no choice but to leave her hiding place to seek out the only way to end the game and hopefully keep her life, telling her followers as such (who only grow more and more concerned as she stops answering for a time). However, she notices the shadow of a spirit woman, who chases her into the bathroom.

There in the bathroom, she struggles to type out the word "help," which feels a bit silly though she was working with a phone from 2008, so maybe it's not that silly. But her behavior is still a bit ridiculous, as she panics from a locked door with the spirit not even near her, and screams and makes way too much noise. Like be quiet!

The woman manages to get out of the bathroom because the spirit must've took pity on her, but as she hides beneath the stairs, the spirit slowly walks down the stairs backwards until they are face to face, which is genuinely a creepy moment with the pacing and music. And then the spirit rushes in to possess her...

And the spirit's next move? To end the story of Lonely Girl with one last chapter gushing over the greatness of Hide and Go Seek Alone. It's a bit of a capitalist endeavor from a spirit, but whatever works to spread the word, I guess.

The reasoning behind it was interesting with the woman talking about how she played the game out of resentment for herself and a desire to become cursed. Clearly those participating in the game were not that mentally well due to unhappiness with their lives.

Overall, this story was clearly low-budget, but it was a lot of fun with the atmosphere being guided by the chat room text and the backwards progression of the plot. And it did make me think, even if it wasn't as carefully crafted as movies like Pulse. Due to that, I give it a rating of 4/5.