It does not convey horror or envelop the viewer as a suspense and horror film would promise, but is a worthy representative of the ‘found footage’ genre, that is, it sabotages the truth of unusual events—whether real or not—by falsifying them for the sake of the plot, such as the supposed discovery of videos that allude, as here, to paranormal events that, while gaining excessive media attention, have become urban legends through word of mouth. Should it be scary? Of course.And in fact, it does at the beginning when we not only see Rika performing the ritual – that of the game Hitori Kakurenbo – in which they fill a stuffed doll with their fingernails and rice to summon a demon at 3 a.m. and lock themselves in a closet, but we also see that the game of hide-and-seek has gone viral and we read on the teenager’s screen ‘Yu-san, you haven’t posted lately. It’s Eri.’ And the young girl replies, ‘If you don’t play hide and seek alone, you don’t have the right to post… I panicked because I couldn’t find the doll.’ But the fear and anguish, or what could have been improved in another narrative direction, begins to fade from the moment the group of producers want to revisit the subject to turn it into a film.

Shinoda, the screenwriter, says, ‘Isn’t that a mistake? I don’t know anything about ghosts.’ And El Yamashita (presumably the director) replies, ‘Not at all, I want to be the one to observe these phenomena objectively.’ So they seek objectivity in a media phenomenon that cannot be verified, and therefore see no other way out than to play the Hitori game themselves.

Then Yamashita disappears. While Shinoda searches for him, the producer threatens that if he doesn’t show up in 72 hours, production will be cancelled. Shinoda interviews one of the many young girls who has suffered the paranormal effects of playing the viral Hitori. The girl tells him that she met a girl named Sumie who became her friend and, while playing with the stuffed animal, summoned a girl named Hazuki.

But she never heard from Sumie again until she returned some time later and her grandmother tried to kill her. When Shinoda continues his investigation to understand what happened to Yamashita, he interviews the grandmother and she tells him that she tried to kill her because Sumie was using the stuffed animal to summon Hazuki, her mother who died long ago. When Shinoda finally comes across Yamashita, he tells him that he is already dead, and in the end, the producer finds Shinoda in a defeated position on the table, just as Shinoda found Yamashita playing Hitori, without the film ever being made.