Ummm...whoa

[dabouncerx24]

The intricate story takes a lot of thinking to process, and the directors deliberately tries to cover up the story time and time again (which gets extremely fucking annoying if you're really into it) until the very end, I think that's why your friend (and most other non-fans) of the movie find it bad.
Another thing, it's like subtle-horror/mystery instead of the upright-straight-in-your-face scare you movie like The Ring or The Grudge.

[GT40FIED]

Actually, the same friend downright loathed both of the "Ringu" movies (the two main ones) and all of the "Ju-On" movies. They're all too obvious and lack the subtlety of that horror genre. It's such a shame, too because they had such potential. The capitalization on the success of those films, most notably Takashi Miike's "One Missed Call" (a shame, because he's so fucking awesome) and "Uzumaki" made it clear that the genre should be dead and buried, despite what some Hollywood studios had in mind.

As for Shadowless Sword...while it looks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's definitely not a duck (the duck being "Hero"). Stylistically it's somewhere between "Hero" and "House Of Flying Daggers". That's about where the similarities end. Shocked? You should be...I was. While there is an overuse of wireworks strangely reminiscent of old Jet Li period pieces (if you've ever seen "The Evil Cult", you'll know where I'm going with this), most of the ridiculous wireworks are not used in the fight scenes. Sure, they're there...but people aren't fighting in mid air with swords in hand. The story is more about honor and protection than bout revenge and storyteling. It should also be noted that this movie has a lot more blood than Hero and the lead chick is simply amazingly hot (way hotter than the chick in Hero). While the story's a bit lacking, the battle scenes more than make up for it's flaws. Is it better than Hero? Yes and no. Watch it and you be the judge.