“We’re in the ancient Japan of the Hyaku-monogatari (the classical ghost-story anthology The Hundred Tales), but you’ve never seen a Japanese period movie like this before... Niwatsukino’s wildly enjoyable debut is crammed with humour and visual surprises. At a time when 95% of Japanese indies are about the emotional and sexual-identity problems of young people, it is (to say the least) refreshing to find a movie that goes for broke with a subject that blows genre conventions apart while offering gutsy storytelling, vivid performances and a fabulous sense of cinema’s possibilities. Buddhists will love it, but so will most everyone else." — Tony Rayns, Vancouver IFF notes