Oh my gosh I was so disappointed in this one, you guys. I thought for sure this would be a home run, I mean Japanese horror, HOW CAN YOU GO WRONG. It has to be creepy, right? 
 Nope. Turns out it can just be stilted and kind of boring. 
 Conceptually it's fine: a family moves into an apartment building erected right next to a graveyard and starts experiencing weird shit. The execution is where it's lacking. I don't know if it's a style thing or a translation thing or just a bad combination of the two, but the narration in this book is winding and super redundant. Characters return to the same thoughts, opinions, feelings, and ideas over and over and over again, as though they're afraid that we won't understand or remember them they only state them once. 
 Specific phrases and words are also re-used pretty frequently, some oddly elaborate and circuitous enough that they stick out more than they normally would. I'm assuming that the words are maybe more common in Japan and/or have a very specific, wordy translation, but the cumulative effect of this, the concept repetition, and the stilted dialogue, is that The Graveyard Apartment can be a real fucking chore to get through. 
 It'd even out maybe if the story were a little more interesting, but there's just not a whole to propel the narrative. Spooks are mild and sparse, and there's little effort made to explain anything. The Graveyard Apartment contains some interesting elements - the dark history of Misao and Teppei's seemingly idyllic relationship, the mysteriously halted construction of an underground shopping mall, the slow desertion of the apartment complex and isolation of the family, and a pretty mindfucky scene in the basement towards the end - but none of it ever builds to anything concrete. Threads are brought up but never tied together, and the last act plays out without any real explanation or motivation beyond "ghostly evil". 
 Also, I'm sorry, but an evil house just straight-up vaporizing outsiders before they can provide or call for help is totally cheating. That's cheap, evil apartment building. 
 It's absolutely possible that there's some vital cultural context that I'm missing that makes Graveyard Apartment super creepy and relevant - presumably there's a reason that it's a classic - but as someone just looking for some spooks, this book didn't do it for me. There were some creepy ideas and sequences involved, but the writing was too clunky to enjoy, and the payoff too lackluster to make it worth it. It's a bummer, but I'd have to say pass. 
 TWO AND A HALF STARS 
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