The exact translation of Kwaidan is "ghost story," and Kwaidan is nothing more--and nothing less--than four elegantly chilling ghost stories. What it lacks in ultimate significance it more than makes up for in style and sensibility, and maybe that is part of the point of the movie. The ghost story we were told when we were young, the one that seemed so paralyzingly frightening then--it runs the risk of becoming simply silly when placed on a big screen, unless the dramatization contains its own bite and brilliance. Here, it does.