In the video game Fatal Frame, you are Miku Hinasaki, a young woman with a sixth sense for the spectral. Her brother, Mafuyu, has gone missing while investigating the infamous Himuro Mansion. It’s a place so steeped in bad vibes and urban legend that the locals won’t even talk about it. Miku heads into the belly of the beast to find him, only to realize that the mansion is a sprawling, multi-dimensional trap filled with the vengeful spirits of those who died during a botched ritual. But instead of killing things, you capture their souls on film to banish them.

Director Makoto Shibata and producer Keisuke Kikuchi didn’t just want to make a game; they wanted to craft a sensory experience. They drew heavily on Japanese war films and classic ghost stories. They were obsessed with making this the scariest thing possible, to the point where they had to cut some of the more graphic ideas because they were just too intense.

When the game hit North American shelves, the marketing department went full exploitation-hustle, slapping “Based on a True Story” on the box. Did a real mansion in Japan have a creepy ritual? Maybe. Does it matter? Not really.

Mari Asato’s 2014 adaptation Fatal Frame: The Movie (or Gekijōban Zero) is going to throw you a curveball if you think it’s going to be based on the game. Instead of frantic survival horror, this is a much moodier, gothic-drenched melodrama that trades jump scares for a haunting, atmospheric exploration of isolation and forbidden love.

The story centers on Aya Tsukimori (Ayami Nakajō), the coolest girl at a strict Catholic boarding school, who suddenly barricades herself in her dorm room. She becomes an urban legend, as students who kiss a photo of Aya at midnight disappear, only to be found later, drowned. When Michi Kazato (Aoi Morikawa) begins digging into the vanishing of her classmates, she finds herself pulled into a supernatural web that is far older and more tragic than a simple schoolyard curse. The plot gets pretty convoluted, involving a photographer named Mary (Noriko Nakagoshi) who archives the past suicides of women who couldn’t face a society that rejected their love. I

So yes, while sold as a video game tie-in, this is based on Fatal Frame: A Curse Affecting Only Girls by Eiji Ohtsuka, which explains why this feels like a doomed romance influenced by lesbian vampire films. It was directed and written by Mari Asato.