Does anyone else remember when Japanese urban legends were everywhere on the Internet? American j-horror remakes had kind of fallen out of favor, and people were going straight to the source for unique thrills and chills. That’s what Stay Pretty, No Pity – a new short film out of Tokyo, based on a legend from the Edo period – reminds me of.

Stay Pretty, No Pity is about a young woman haunted by a terrifying spirit who warns her that if she wants to stay pretty, she’ll have to solve the ghost’s mystery – or the ghost will have no pity in what she does next. It’s cleverly shot and staged for maximum Covid-compliance, and the acting and camerawork are pretty good. But it’s way too ambitious a premise to be crammed into the short, 11-minute runtime it’s given. Which brings me to the title of this article.

The short film Stay Pretty, No Pity is technically more of a pitch for a feature-length film the team wants to make. Either to raise the funds for a full-length film, to gauge interest in it, or both, the short – referred to by the lead actress as a “sizzle reel” – was released on November 26th, 2021 as “proof of concept.” And I, for one, am intrigued. But I do think a lot of work needs done on it before it’s ready to be a full-length movie, mostly in the translation department.

As I was watching, I turned on the closed-captioning. Though both that and the dialogue were in English, the two rarely matched up. The ideas conveyed were similar, but they were written in completely different ways, or ideas that were present in one would be missing from the other. And these definitely weren’t auto-generated closed-captions, so it almost seemed like nobody could quite agree on the script. And though it doesn’t make for as punchy a title, “no mercy” conveys the ghost’s intent much better than “no pity.” Honestly, the “stay pretty” bit didn’t feel that important to the plot, either. Stay Pretty, No Pity sounds more like a movie about a woman willing to do whatever it takes to stay young and beautiful venturing down a path of villainy because of it, not a movie about a young woman terrorized by a ghost whose idea of “staying pretty” is more along the lines of “staying alive.” Call it something like Oiwa (the ghost’s name) instead, and you just might have the next j-horror hit.

5 out of 10