In short: Temple (2017)

When it comes to horror sub-genres with dubious returns for the viewer, the old “stupid Americans get themselves killed by visiting the wrong foreign place?” does present a particularly pathetic picture.

Directed by Michael Barrett, and written by Simon Barrett who has written some really good stuff (The Guest comes to mind) in the past, yet is also responsible for some very much less good stuff (Blair Witch and some of the worst segments of the VHS movies), this one finds three young pretty things going to Japan. They are The Girl (Natalia Warner), The Asshole Boyfriend (Brandon Sklenar), and The Girl’s Male Best Friend (Logan Huffman). The last one does of course have a vague history of mental illness that doesn’t at all point to a particularly useless twist ending (no, sir!) and a giant crush on The Girl she somehow manages not just to ignore but not to notice. They are not on vacation but doing some vague stuff concerning Japanese temples having to do with The Girl’s folkloric studies; why someone who doesn’t speak Japanese is doing her work on Japanese themes, we don’t know, or if we are involved here behind the camera, we don’t care about. In one immense twist on the formula, at least Male Best Friend does know the language of the country the idiots are visiting.

Of course, the three fools sooner or later stumble upon the trace of a creepy temple in the country (I’ll spare us all the would-be creepy back and forth to find out about it), a temple, I might add, the next people Male Best Friend encounters in Tokyo just happen to know all about to warn our heroes off. Of course, they still go and encounter some surprisingly lame Japanese ghosties (of course including a creepy little boy) as well as the least fox spirit like fox spirit you can imagine, and go through various personal troubles. Things end on a particularly stupid twist ending that makes no fucking sense at all when seen in connection with the film that came before it.

The sad thing about Temple is that it should have a lot going for it. Unlike many of these tourist horror things, the film was actually co-produced by a Japanese company and shot in Japan, and includes actual Japanese actors speaking actual Japanese. Why, even the effects are made in Japan, so there is at least a degree of authenticity concerning things Japanese. Unfortunately, the Barretts squander the inherent possibilities of their set-up with a generic story about generic people told in a generic way ending in a muddled series of twists that lack any logical coherence. It’s not just that that the film’s final act makes no sense, I can’t even parse what sense the filmmakers are trying to do.


You’d think the filmmakers would at least have the chutzpah to steal from the better Japanese horror films for their shocks, but they can’t even get around to creating a decent creepy little boy (he doesn’t even make cat noises or crawls under anyone’s blanket), while the fox spirit is just a generic CGI monster. There’s just nothing in Temple that could keep anyone’s interest up. Well, at least it’s short.