Saturday, July 17, 2010

DVD Review: Ghost Hunt


Ghost Hunt
Madman Entertainment
Review by Carissa Thorp
Mai Taniyama is a student who literally stumbles across the investigation into supernatural occurrences at her school's neighboring abandoned campus. Mai becomes a temporary assistant to Kazuya Shibuya, teenage owner of and lead investigator at Shibuya Psychic Research, a company brought in by the school to solve the mystery of the haunted building.
A novice at this kind of thing, Mai is thrust into a world populated by ghosts, poltergeists, spirits, and other psychic phenomena, as well as the strange people who deal with them, including mediums, monks and priests. She takes it all in pretty well, considering, and steps up to play her part in solving the mystery.
An entertaining mix of mystery and the supernatural, with touches of romance and humour, Ghost Hunt feels like a teen X-Files. It's definitely more mystery-adventure than horror-thriller, though, and fairly mild-mannered as these things go. 
The developing relationships and story plots are well paced and complicated, and though many of the characters seem implausibly young to be "professionals" at this kind of thing, they spark off each other nicely.
I enjoyed what I saw of Ghost Hunt. Check it out for yourself.
(You can see full episodes of Ghost Hunt for free on Madman's site.)