AllMovie

Summer Vacation 1999 is a 1988 Japanese sci-fi ghost-story directed by Shusuke Kaneko, adapted from the manga series The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio. It follows the lives of four students alone in a remote all-boys boarding school with no one else on their summer vacations. It concerns the relationships between the pupils after one of their classmates commits suicide, and then apparently returns as a double. Although the manga concerns homoerotic relationships among the boys, director Kaneko used girls, aged 14 to 16, to portray the boys in the film. The film contains elements of science fiction and suspense/horror films, but also high-school drama and romance.