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review | notes | availability | |
Notes:
Ju-On was followed by a sequel titled
Ju-on: The Grudge 2, both of which followed
two television prequels. The original Ju-on
was a 2000 shot-on-video television feature co-starring
Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill and Battle
Royale fame. Takashi Shimizu directed all of 'em.
Takashi Shimizu also directed the American
remake The Grudge, starring Sarah Michelle
Gellar in the Rika role.
Pale, mute Yuya Ozeki plays the role of Toshio
in both Ju-on and its U.S. remake
Availability:
DVD (USA)
Region 1 NTSC
Lions Gate Home Entertainment
16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen
Japanese Language Track
Dolby Digital 5.1
Removable English Subtitles
Various extras
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Cast: |
Megumi
Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa, Kanji
Tsuda, Kayoko Shibata, Yukako Kukuri, Shuri Matsuda,
Yoji Tanaka, Takashi Matsuyama, Yuya Ozeki, Takako Fuji,
Chikara Ishikura, Chikako Isomura, Daisuke Honda |
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Review
by Kozo: |
There's a moment midway
through Ju-on: The Grudge where pretty Hitomi
(model Misaki Ito) gets freaked out, crawls into bed,
and hides under the covers. Her actions are as lifesaving
as a bulletproof vest made of paper, but her "hide
your eyes" act sort of sums up the entire experience
behind Takashi Shimizu's celebrated Japanese horror
flick. The director has a fine handle on technique,
and creates an effective suspense flick that should
send slumber parties of teenage girls into oodles
of frightened giggles. But besides that, there's not
much going on here. There's an intriguing mystery
in Ju-on: The Grudge, but it ultimately proves
less interesting than Shimizu's textbook scary handling.
The "grudge"
referenced in the title has something to do with a
vengeful spirit that's out for supreme payback. It
resides in a seemingly-average house where it deals
sudden creepy smackdowns on a variety of unsuspectingand
sometimes questionably intelligentindividuals.
The main victim of the Grudge's bad karma is Rika
(Megumi Okina), a social worker sent to take care
of elderly Sachie (Chikako Isomura). She finds the
house in a state of disarray, and discovers a pale
child named Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) popping out of closets
and generally scaring the pants out of whoever happens
to wander in the home. Toshio is accompanied by another
roving spirit, which is your standard ghostly female
with long black hair ala every scary Asian
movie made in the last decade. Together the two take
out whoever crosses their path, leading to the obvious
question: what gives?
The mystery behind the pair's
horror hijinks is dispensed in a variety of vignettes,
each depicting how the Grudge gets ahold of its victims.
Aside from Rika, there's the couple (Shuri Matsuda
and Kanji Tsuda) living in the house, the cop (Yoji
Tanaka) investigating the crime, his daughter Izumi
(Misa Uehara), three of her school acquaintances,
other social workers, even more cops, and probably
even Ayumi Hamasaki, if she ever bothered to enter
the cursed home. The reason behind the curse: bad
stuff, which is doled out in some of the stories,
usually when one of the characters is actually doing
a little investigating. They investigate, and then
the Grudge gets them. Otherwise, the Grudge gets people
who seem to have no outward connection to itexcept
they happened to cross its path one day. The lesson:
if you enter a house that appears messy and empty,
get the hell out.
Ultimately, what's learned
is nothing too surprising or even scary. Ju-on
doesn't create an elaborate web of creepy mystery
like The Ring, and certainly doesn't provide
the same payoff. At the same time, director Shimizu
gets great mileage out of his sure-handed direction,
and basically squeezes every ounce of fright out of
his bare bones script that he possibly can. Shimizu
gets full audience participation, as he gets the viewer's
eye to search each frame looking for the expected
moments of fright. Sometimes the moments are there,
and sometimes they're not, and sometimes Shimizu squeezes
a sudden Toshio appearance into a place people didn't
expect. Effective sound design, plus the claustrophobic
settings and dialogue-free acting all add to the effect.
Ju-on is more-or-less a textbook example of
buzzwothy Asian horror, in that it milks the usual
iconography for all its worth (Girls with long black
hair! Creepy pale kids! Slow-moving portents of doom!).
Still, Shimizu does enough to make Ju-on an
entertaining movie. Nothing about Ju-on enlightens
or even affects, but you can invite some friends over,
turn off the lights, and watch them squirm for ninety
minutes. That's probably worth a rental to some people.
(Kozo 2004)
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