Don't Look Up (1996 film)

Don't Look Up (女優霊, joyū rei; literally "Ghost Actress") is a 1996 Japanese horror film directed by Hideo Nakata. The story takes place on a film set where a drama is being shot. It follows Toshio Murai, a first-time director, who begins to see a ghostly figure after discovering that undeveloped footage from an old film has been mixed in with his own negatives. The ghost, a pale woman in white with long hair, appears in the background of scenes and laughs hysterically. As production continues, crew members report sightings, a teenage actor dies in a fall, and Murai himself is dragged away by the spirit. The film was not a box office hit in Japan, but it led to an English-language remake in 2009 and shaped Nakata's approach to his later hit *Ring* (1998).

Nakata made the film to raise money for a documentary about director Joseph Losey. He had previously worked at Nikkatsu, a studio that had shifted from Roman Porno films to struggling with home video competition. After leaving Nikkatsu and studying British Free Cinema in London, Nakata returned to Japan and developed *Don't Look Up* for J-Movie Wars, a subsidiary of a satellite television company. Most of the movie was shot on Nikkatsu’s abandoned soundstages. It ran for six weeks in limited release, with Nakata estimating only about 800 people saw it in theaters. A video release followed in Japan on March 6, 1996.

The cast includes Yūrei Yanagi as director Toshio Murai, Yasuyo Shirashima as lead actress Hitomi Kurokawa, and Kei Ishibashi as the young actor Saori Mochizuki. In 2003, Distant Horizon bought the remake rights, initially planning for Nakata to direct again. Fruit Chan eventually directed the English-language version, which premiered at Sweden’s Lund Fantastisk Film Festival in 2009 and came out on DVD in the U.S. in 2010. Nakata’s later film *Ghost Theater* was promoted as a remake, though critic Maggie Lee noted the two films share only a vengeful female ghost who targets rising actresses.

Nakata won Best New Director at the 1997 Michinoku International Mystery Film Festival for *Don't Look Up*. He later felt he showed too much of the ghost’s face. Josh Ralske of AllMovie praised Nakata’s confidence and slow-building tension but found the screenplay felt unfinished, concluding the film promised more than it delivered.