There are few things more terrifying than watching a ghost story that’s completely devoid of life. Eketeke, the 2009 Japanese supernatural horror flick about a vengeful half-body ghost who likes slicing people in half, manages to take an urban legend that should have been nightmare fuel—and somehow turns it into NyQuil. This film isn’t scary; it’s an overlong PSA against walking home at night with the emotional impact of a wet paper bag.
If the Teke Teke legend has ever frightened you, fear not—this movie will cure you. By the end, you’ll be wishing the ghost would just crawl out of the screen and cut the film itself in half to spare you the agony.
🚄 The Premise: Girl Interrupted (At the Waist)
The real Teke Teke story is simple: a schoolgirl falls onto train tracks, gets cut in half, and returns as a crawling specter that moves at lightning speed and splits her victims in two. It’s urban legend gold—compact, gruesome, and absurdly visual. The movie’s mistake? Trying to add logic to a ghost whose entire appeal is that she’s a supernatural freak show.
We open with an office worker walking home at night, because in Japan, nothing good ever happens to women near train tracks. A spooky breeze blows, she hears scuttling noises, and before you can say “Run, lady!”, she’s upper torso on the asphalt and lower torso on the fast track to nowhere. Cue a splash of ketchup-level blood, some jump scares that could barely startle a houseplant, and we’re off to the races—or rather, the slow crawl.
Enter Kana, our heroine: a schoolgirl so bland she makes boiled rice seem charismatic. Her best friend, Ayaka, ropes her into asking out a boy named Utsumi, who’s so wooden you half expect him to sprout branches mid-scene. One thing leads to another, and before long, someone’s being bisected again. The ghost’s name echoes through the night like a bad stomach growl: Teke teke teke teke. It’s supposed to be scary. It sounds more like a toddler trying to say “tickle.”
🎎 The Cast: Cardboard Cutouts with Pulse
The performances here are less “acting” and more “obligatory participation.” Yuko Oshima, who plays Kana, gives the kind of performance you’d expect from someone reading IKEA instructions in a haunted house. Every time something horrifying happens, she reacts as though she’s mildly inconvenienced by a late train.
Mami Yamasaki as Rie tries her best to inject emotion into the script, but when your lines include “We must put the memorial back in its original position,” there’s only so much an actor can do. Mai Nishida’s Ayaka gets the worst fate—not death by ghost, but death by script. She’s barely on screen long enough to develop a personality before she’s neatly separated into “upper” and “lower” billing.
Even the ghost, Teke Teke herself, looks like she’s phoning it in. She should be terrifying—a woman dragging her entrails across the ground at high speed, slicing victims in half with spectral fury. Instead, she’s filmed like a misunderstood centipede with a grudge. Half the time, you can practically hear the director whisper, “We’ll fix it in post.” Spoiler: they didn’t.
🩸 The Horror: More Meh Than Macabre
Let’s talk scares—or rather, the absence thereof. Kōji Shiraishi, who previously directed Noroi: The Curse (a genuinely creepy found-footage film), somehow went from subtle psychological dread to “boo!—okay, now nothing happens for 20 minutes.” The editing rhythm is so off that even the jump scares seem to fall asleep waiting for their cue.
Every horror beat is the same:
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Someone walks alone.
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The wind blows.
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The sound of someone dragging wet spaghetti across tile.
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Suddenly, blood!
Rinse, repeat, lose will to live.
Even the gore lacks enthusiasm. You’d expect at least one delightfully grotesque dismemberment to spice things up—but instead, we get quick cuts and shadows doing all the heavy lifting. It’s as if the director was trying to make a slasher film for people who faint at paper cuts.
🧠 The Plot Twists: Now With 80% More Nonsense
The backstory is where Eketeke truly derails. Apparently, our murderous half-ghost is the spirit of Reiko Kashima, a nurse assaulted by an American soldier after World War II. Traumatized, she develops an aversion to the color red and jumps off an overpass. It’s an attempt to give the legend a tragic dimension—but instead, it feels like the writers grabbed a random tragic backstory from a hat labeled “generic ghost trauma.”
From there, the movie turns into an underwhelming road trip. Kana and her cousin Rie go off ghost-hunting like discount versions of The Ring’s journalists, interviewing old women, dusty professors, and possibly a catatonic screenwriter. Every conversation exists solely to explain something that doesn’t need explaining.
There’s even a scene where they literally lift a fallen memorial stone—because nothing says tension like manual labor in the dark. It’s like watching a Home Depot commercial directed by a ghost.
🚨 The Logic: Half a Body, Half a Brain
The “rules” of Teke Teke make less sense the longer you think about them. Look at the ghost and you die in three days. But only if she feels like it. She hates red, but still shows up in front of red cars. She can sprint on her hands at superhuman speed but somehow can’t open a door. If you try to reason this out, your brain will divide itself in half in protest.
And that ending—oh, that ending. After an entire film of buildup, Kana survives… only to spend the rest of her life in a traumatized state until someone offers her a red box of sweets, which triggers a screaming fit. Yes, this horror movie ends with a box of candy. Willy Wonka had scarier finales.
💀 The Tone: All Gloom, No Boom
What makes Eketeke particularly frustrating is that it takes itself so seriously. There’s no camp, no self-awareness, no humor—just endless brooding and shots of gloomy train tracks. It’s like The Grudge but without the scares, the style, or Sarah Michelle Gellar’s confused expressions.
You can tell the filmmakers believed they were crafting a dark, folkloric masterpiece. Instead, it plays like a 90-minute PSA about rail safety with bonus disembowelment. The ghost may be half a person, but this film is missing its entire soul.
🕯️ Final Thoughts: Teketeke, More Like Tekeshtekesleep
There are two kinds of bad horror films: the fun kind that makes you laugh at the absurdity, and the dreary kind that makes you question your life choices. Eketeke proudly belongs to the second category. It’s not hilariously bad—it’s monotonously bad. The only thing it successfully kills is your patience.
If you’re desperate for a Teke Teke fix, do yourself a favor and read the Wikipedia summary with a flashlight under your chin. It’ll be scarier, shorter, and less emotionally draining.
Still, credit where it’s due: the filmmakers did capture one terrifying truth—the horror of watching your favorite urban legend get turned into cinematic sludge.
So yes, the movie is technically about a ghost cut in half. But the real victim here? The audience.
1 out of 5 severed torsos.
Because even in death, Teke Teke deserves better than this half-assed haunting.
