This is touted as a Takashi Miike "family film". I hope he had a lot of fun making all the monsters as I had watching them. Family film? Well maybe. The main character and reluctant hero is a kid, not quite pre-pube age, so I guess that would qualify. His parents are divorced and he has been sent to stay with grandpa, who maybe has dementia but maybe he knows something about yokai. The kids at school taunt him as "city boy" but he is there for a purpose in the bigger picture.
Yokai are a bunch of different types of spirts. There are kappa who like cumcumbers and sumo wrestling, Yuki-onna or snow queens, Rokurokubi with long, snake like necks, shape-shifting obake and tengu, one-eyed goblins, and yuurei-spirits of murdered people who go around in white kimonos. I believe Totoro could also be considered yokai, but I would need someone from Japan to confirm this. I think little kids would find the monsters scary.
The story jumps around a bit and that detracted from the whole thing. I will rate it 3/5 acorns.
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