She thought she moved into a house. She moved into a story that still bleeds.
Kaidan (2025) is a chilling reawakening of Japan’s most enduring ghost traditions, blending classical horror with arthouse precision. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse), the film offers not only supernatural dread, but a deeply human tragedy wrapped in silence, shadows, and ancient grief.
Set in Kyoto’s forgotten district of Gion, the story follows Asuka (Rinko Kikuchi), a widow and tea master haunted by visions after moving into an ancestral home left to her by a mysterious uncle. Within the paper-thin walls and creaking floorboards, she discovers remnants of an unspoken massacre—a blood feud buried by generations and kept at bay by ancient rituals.
The deeper Asuka delves, the more fragmented time becomes. Ghosts don't merely appear—they linger, silently walking past her, leaving footprints on tatami mats and messages in disappearing ink. Each spirit is tied to a broken vow, a buried emotion, a moment frozen in suffering. When Asuka breaks the final seal—a rotting wooden mask hidden beneath floorboards—she doesn’t just awaken a curse… she invites it.
Kaidan moves with deliberate stillness. Its horror comes from absence: the faint sobbing in another room, the lingering gaze of a character long dead, the sound of a koto playing when no one is there. Kurosawa uses traditional aesthetics—low candlelight, hand-painted screens, and minimalist composition—to draw out unease. The fear isn’t in what you see, but in what follows you home.
This is not a jump-scare ghost story. Kaidan (2025) is a meditation on generational pain, inherited sin, and the cost of forgetting. It whispers rather than screams—and it never truly ends.
