I'm not particularly a wimp about horror films, but nor am I especially a fan - to a pretty large extent, I just don't see the point of them (I know, I know - the wrong kind of question to be asking ). Anyway, consequently I don't see that many example of the genre - which maybe accounts for why I can't recall having ever felt genuine creeped out-related chills down my spine because of a film before A Tale of Two Sisters (which works the trick not once but several times)...unnervedness yes, and sometimes the shock and jump in my seat induced by a sudden appearance or apparition, but not honest to goodness chills.
I became aware of A Tale of Two Sisters a little while back, probably last year or the year before - whenever it showed at MIFF, anyway. The promotional picture - two doll-like Asian girls against a Laura Ashley background - caught my eye, as did the blurb, and those impressions stayed with me sufficiently that I rented it last weekend. The upshot, anyway, is that it's very good - I didn't really know anything about the film, so I didn't have any inkling as to the direction that the creepiness would come from, with the result that I was on edge the whole time and, as the film went on, increasingly uneasy about the darkened room in which I was watching it. The sets are lush and deeply coloured, and menacing, and the acting is high quality, keeping the viewer unsure about what is happening at any point - has a spooky, increasingly suffocating atmosphere, some outright frightening moments, a couple of genuine twists and a satisfying (as far as the conventions of the genre go) ending, that last pushing it in a direction which is both new and in line with what has gone before.
