Kaidan

Synopsis

Iki mixes old and new technologies to create a film that evokes both the sights and sounds (hum of cicadas) of a hot Japanese summer. Black and white photographs of a Shinto shrine, summer landscape and an old Japanese-style house provide the backdrop and CGI technology adds the visual interest in the form of an unusual little girl and her ghostly frog companion. The ghost in this story is more a curiosity than something scary, and the use of a fish-eye lens and other distortions suggest both the sweltering humidity of summer and also imply that the frog is an imaginary creation of the young protagonist.