This movie could alternately be called "Stress Will F***ing Kill You". Because often times, this movie could be taken as the occasional break downs of an over burdened woman named Yoshimi hurdling towards mental collapse. From the director who started the J-Horror craze of the turn of the millennium with Ringu, Hideo Nakata, The plot follows a recently divorced woman, trying to take care of her daughter and avoid the same divorced childhood that she grew up in, which, coincidentally, was also the same circumstances of the vacant apartment above them where the daughter ended up going missing. Her callous ex-husband tries to make her efforts as miserable as possible, out of simple spite. She attempts to put on a strong front and has little successes, but eventually the water just will not stop dripping from the ceiling and her sanity is chipped away slowly.

The end of the movie was almost the most tragic of all. Ten years later, the daughter, Ikuko, randomly ends up in her old neighborhood and finds her old apartment, now condemned. She has no memory of the place at all besides "I used to live with my mother here," forgetting Yoshimi's extreme sacrifices for her in life, that she has even continued on carrying out in the afterlife.

Honestly I'd have preferred if the movie was just about mental breakdowns from stress but alas the monster here is real. It may make the movie have a bit less of a statement, but it doesn't make it any less good as others could help themselves by borrowing from the "less is more" philosophy seen here.