This is the first entry in a long series of apparently quite successful Japanese POV horror films. This one was – if you believe the IMDb credits, which is always risky – directed by Yuji Ichinose.
As its title suggests, Paranormal Surveillance Camera consists of various scenes supposedly taken from the many real surveillance cameras all over Tokyo, with a couple of “witness interviews” occasionally strewn in. As one can imagine, this aesthetic approach to found footage at its rawest does not lend itself to cinematic luxuries like plot, drama or characters, and none of these things do manifest magically.
Instead, the film is mostly set up as a kind of supernatural mini “Where’s Waldo”s, where we are shown a very quotidian scene from Tokyo, only for the - typical for Japanese POV horror of this style and probably the “real” documentaries it’s built on - combination of narrator (Suzuki Tomoharu) and captions to slowly reveal the creepiness hidden in backgrounds, mirrors, as well as sometimes the foreground, via suggestions where to look, slow motion and blurry blow-ups of details. For all its basicness, and the general lack of direct threat to anyone but one’s eyesight the ghosts appearing on screen present, there is a certain frisson to some of Paranormal Surveillance Camera’s episodes thanks to an effective sense of how to time the simple reveals. Mostly, this works in its cheap yet cheerful way because the small visual puzzle every single scene is feels well-constructed, presented with some thought to formal structure and how to time shocks, even if the shock is only the viewer’s realization of “oh! There’s the creepy thing this time!”.
Which is actually pretty cool once you think about it.
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