A girl, Yūri Kurahashi, after watching a cursed videotape together with her friend in a haunted house, becomes trapped in a conflict between the two murderous ghosts: Sadako Yamamura and Kayako Saeki.

Why we’re looking forward to this: What’s better than a new film featuring your favourite monster or psychopath, or indeed a new film featuring two of them going toe to toe? In the great tradition of versus movies—think Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Freddy vs. Jason—we’re about to have a showdown between The Ring’s Sadako and The Grudge’s Kayako which should send chills down your spine and have you glancing nervously at your television on a regular basis and avoiding slender girls with long dark hair.

Incredibly this ghostly face off began life as an April Fool’s joke last year before morphing into an actual production, and will be the twelfth film in both franchises. Exactly how these two angry women will end up battling each other remains to be seen, but with both series having a solid, if similar, mythology we’re looking forward to being scared witless by this latest J-horror offering.

Sadako vs. Kayako is released in Japan on 18 June and will no doubt reach the rest of the world shortly thereafter.

RICHARD COSGROVE

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