Hello, everyone. I'm so pleased to see you here with me now. Today I'm talking about a Japan's thriller film "On Losing a Smartphone (Smaho wo Otoshita-dakenanoni)" released in 2018 November.
The film is based on a 2017 novel written by Shiga Akira. What story does it have? Inaba Asami (starring Kitagawa Keiko) is a Japanese unmarried lady in 30 years old. She calls her boyfriend as always one day, and hears an unfamiliar man's voice. He says he happened to pick up the smartphone at the roadside. It comes back to her boyfriend in peace before long. However, from the time on, Asami's secrets are disclosed in Internet one after another. Oh, terrible.
At the same time, far from Asami and her boyfriend, a case of serial murders comes to light. Several bodies of Japanese young ladies were found one by one in a local mountain. Detectives reason there's a point in common amongst the victims. What is it? What is the man who happened to pick the smartphone up and talk with Asami? How on earth do the serial murders link with losing a smartphone?
The thriller film was directed by Nakata Hideo who directed a 1998 thriller film "Ring." I think the film is (kind of) similar to the Ring in a sense. Both use, as a key of the story, an instrument dominant in the releasing times. They used a smartphone this time, used a video tape in the Ring. There is a cursed video tape, and you are going to die 7 days later if you watch it. The Ring's property was very convincing in 1998, but I suppose it doesn't work today. We're mostly difficult to play a video tape now, aren't we?
What does it mean? If you have a smartphone, you can enjoy the thriller film. It made about 1.9 billion yen at the box office. And the sequel will be coming in 2020, they say.