As a film festival that exclusively brings found-footage films to the big screen, Unnamed Footage Film Festival is one of my favourite times of the year. On the 28th of March, the fest brought San Francisco audiences The Unsolved Love Hotel Murder Case Incident, a production out of Japan from filmmakers Dave Jackson and Guy (apparently, it’s just Guy). Unsolved Love Hotel follows the classic ghost-hunter formula, yet it is never stale. Watching it, you can see Guy and Jackson’s real passion for obscure Japanese horror films.

“Hey, you two like horror right?’ Kuromi (Kuromi Kirishima) says to her friends Guy and Dave. She then introduces them to a woman whose friend was brutally murdered years ago at a pay-by-the-hour love hotel. Of course, being the journalists they are, the friends have to investigate the long abandoned love hotel district. Once they get to the room of the crime, out come the unrested spirits and other supernatural dangers.

The writer-director duo have a slew of gruesome shorts between them as well as feature films: the notoriously ‘disturbing’ slasher Cat Sick Blues (Jackson) and Japanese insectoid body horror The Sound of Summer (Guy) that previews the level of practical effects in unsolved Love Hotel. The two host a podcast- Show Me Something– on obscure and disturbing films. Clearly talented, the duo’s foray into found-footage horror goes down well. If you haven’t realised, they are both lead actors, too.

Unsolved Love Hotel hits all the right beats of effective found-footage horror: that cosy feeling from watching an adventurous group of friends, then upping the suspense with the supernatural hide and seek, before a climax of mixed threats that the camera can barely keep up with. With disturbing and gory films in its lineage, Unsolved Love Hotel is surprisingly tame- until it isn’t. I will not elaborate further.

A main ensemble cast consisting of the two directors and Kirishima, their naturalistic acting and the genuine connection between the characters needed to sell the film as ‘real’. A standout performance from Kirishima, who gives the fictional Kuromi a ‘must protect at all costs’ vibe (sorry, Dave and Guy).

Unsolved Love Hotel doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the ghost hunting found footage niche, but not every film has to blast open tried and true filming methods or narratives. Unsolved Love Hotel is a perfectly good J-horror mockumentary, one of the better ones in my opinion, and coming in at 70 minutes makes it even better. We always appreciate succinct and effective film in an era where 2 hours seems to be the new normal.

Ghost hunting and J-horror are a well established pair. Most people, I assume, will think of the infamous Noroi: The Curse, screened on opening night at Unnamed Footage Festival.  But Unsolved Love Hotel sent me down a very deep but highly fascinating rabbit hole of the found-footage subgenre coming out of Japan- endless instalments of Tokiyo Videos of Horror, or the Sealed Video franchise and more.

Thanks to Unnamed Footage Fest for bringing Unsolved Love Hotel to San Francisco!  And we’ve heard that UNFF is heading online—stay tuned to the festival’s announcements about the dates when it will run.

“hits all the right beats of effective found-footage horror: that cosy feeling from watching an adventurous group of friends, then upping the suspense with the supernatural hide and seek, before a climax of mixed threats that the camera can barely keep up with”