The starkly beautiful black-and-white photography, full of high-contrast nightmares and ink-dark unreality, puts this Japanese ghost story over the top. It also nicely respects the mystery of its ghosts. They’re two peasant women raped and murdered one bright day back in Japan’s wilder days by a pack of dirty-assed roaming samurais. Through cruel black magic intervention, our sad victims come back shortly after as vengeful spirits dedicated to luring any and all samurais into their home deep in the sensual bamboo forest for spontaneous sex and certain death, always through biting down on the mens’ throats like they’re buffalo wings on Super Bowl Sunday. Blood all over the place, dead samurais everyday. This is bad news for the head samurai french fry, who chooses his best new man to take care of it. The big problem: it turns out that the ghosts are the guy’s own wife and mother, killed while he was off at war and earning his stripes. There’s no happy place for this story to go, but that’s horror for you. The premise comes from centuries old Japanese folklore, an eerie whisper from the past respected and retold with wild style by a director, Kaneto Shindo, who gives us shadows too black even for film noir. There’s no need for logic in this world and Shindo takes advantage. He pushes our head deep down below murky water here, but we can somehow still breathe. This film keeps it simple, never loses us. It’s a fairy tale for late nights. Put this on in the wee hours, where all defenses are down and all distractions are fast asleep. Get into the cinematic dream. Shindo certainly does.