Cute premise, but that's it.

This was probably the worst I've seen from strongberry/matchbox.
The plot didn’t make sense, and not in a "ghosts aren't real" way, but in a "if ghost were real they should still feel emotions that develop from the situation instead of being forced onto the audience without basis" way.
The acting was sloppy and uncomfortable to watch - I never really knew what was supposed to be conveyed in the actors' faces.
Was there a point to the story?? I didn’t get it. I felt like the whole ghost bonding sequence was entirely wasted by a nonsensical script and poor direction/acting. It could have been a really interesting point to make about? Idk not wasting your life? Solidarity between groups oppressed by heterosexual patriarchy? Anything would have been better than the weird, abrupt crying and hugging.
The camerawork and soundwork was messy and inconsistent (did they not have a boom operator on this shoot?), and not to good impact - shaky camera work can communicate something if done well, but done randomly, it just distracts from the (in this case not very good) action. The sound was tinny in a number of scenes.
I hope the team on this project has made a lot of progress since producing this piece.

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Interesting premise and ideas! Heavy on melodrama though

I don’t think the primary theme is a new one to cover/explore; I do think maybe some of the way it was explored was novel. I really like the ambiguity that the end leaves as to the more complicated main character's (hint: his name ends in "woo") motivations and intentions. I think this could have been a great mini series if 1) it gave us more background on both characters, 2) it toned down the melodrama or at least gave it the meat and development to feel plausible, and 3) it gave the wife more room to be a person (I think the actress was wasted a bit in this movie).

I hate that the acting in the acting (story is about a play within the movie itself) relies so much on screaming - if screaming is the only way your character knows how to express intensity, it's a boring, badly written character.

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Meh writing

The manga makes both of the main characters make more sense with fewer words/scenes, surprisingly.

One thing that really bothers me is how one of the main characters was rewritten to be more so much more shallow-ly characterized than he was in the manga. Please keep in mind that the manga is maybe 60 pages total - how do you manage to reduce a character's depth when you turn 60pp of mostly pictures to 2h of content?? He went from a realistic, if eccentric, person to a weird caricature of "innocent and imaginative". Disappointing.

The other main got a sort of similar flattening-out, but not to such a jarring degree.

Beyond that it was fine. Acting in the more bastardized character was kinda wobbly, but he wasn't given great material.

I can't tell you more without spoiling things, so I'll leave it up to you to hunt a full plot outline elsewhere (Wikipedia or forums are a great source of spoilers)! Either way, I definitely recommend finding the manga and reading that instead.

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