I’m not sure what drove me to really want to watch this J-horror movie. Maybe it was to get the nostalgic feeling of watching a typical Japanese horror movie, where a brutal murder, suicide, or supernatural haunting usually occurs—you know, the kind that typically follows the protagonist, and it’s up to them to solve the mystery. *The Convenience Store*, starring Kotona Minami, revolves around a teenage girl working the mundane graveyard shift six days a week at a small food convenience store. Strange happenings begin once a murder is discovered, and the girl is in a race against time to save herself.

I had no idea at the start that this movie project was based on a video game. I had a weird feeling when they showed her in first-person view in the beginning. However—and I mean this with absolutely no disrespect at all—the Japanese can be a bit weird. Then again, whose culture isn’t? It’s part of their charm and probably why so many people are attracted to them. Anyway, I never would have guessed that it was based on a video game. We’re supposed to feel the banality of Yukino’s night-shift work. Each night she goes through the same routine over and over again. Of course, they had to add a creepy coworker into the mix. Once Yukino discovers the horrible murder of their manager in the store’s basement, she is interrogated by the detective, and we learn that she received a couple of SD cards, each with a weird video clip on it. She then slowly reiterates what happened during the last four nights of her shift prior to discovering the murder.

Running at just around one hour and twenty minutes or so, The Convenience Store is a quick time filler. However, I think fans of the video game will likely enjoy this movie much more than folks like myself who haven’t played it. There are a couple of questions at the end that they glossed over, probably due to time and budget limitations or because they’re explained more in the video game. We know the family that was brutally murdered in the beginning are the ones doing the haunting. But why at this convenience store? I can only guess that the store was built on top of the house after their deaths and that no sane person wanted to rent or live on that property. Second, who the heck was that homeless man? We have to assume he was haunted in the past because he knew enough to teach Yukino what to do with the SD cards. So, did he also work at the store in the past? Why didn’t the creepy coworker get haunted? Third, who the heck was that older woman who gave Yukino the protective charm? Lastly, at the very end, Yukino returns, picks up the nail, and sees a vision of the store manager getting murdered in the basement before dropping it and running away. So what does that actually mean for her?

I obviously don’t know to what extent the movie strayed from the video game’s story. The detective clearly wasn’t able to pass the curse on to another person in time and dreaded the realization that his unborn child would be sacrificed. I really think the short run time hampered the story and that it was only created to satisfy a few of the game’s enthusiasts. When it was the detective’s turn to go through pretty much the exact same thing that Yukino went through earlier, it felt just a bit mundane. And, of course, we have to accept that physical SD cards can just appear out of thin air. I mean, why even go through the trouble of getting it in a box to have it delivered when it can just pop out of thin air? And, of course, they had to reuse The Ring’s ruse of passing on the curse to another only by having them watch the same video. The couple of jump scares and fake-outs get tiring really quickly for a movie. I feel that Exit 8 made for a much better game to film adaptation even though I haven’t played either.