A star, Miyuki Goto (Kō Shibasaki) plays Oiwa, the protagonist in a new play based on the ghost storyYotsuya Kaidan. She pulls some strings to get her lover, Kosuke Hasegawa (Ebizō Ichikawa XI) cast in the play, even though he's a relatively unknown actor. Other performers, Rio Asahina (Miho Nakanishi) and Jun Suzuki (Hideaki Itō), lust after Miyuki. Offstage, the cast's possessive love and obsessions exist as reality. Trapped between the play and reality, the cast's feelings for each other are amplified. When it becomes clear that love is not meant to be both on and off stage, love turns into a grudge and crosses the blurred line between reality and fantasy.
Dennis Harvey of Variety, after watching it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, wrote: "Actors rehearsing a classic ghost tale find life imitating art in this atypically dull Takashi Miike opus".[5]
