Ju-on: The
Grudge
呪怨じゅおん（２００２）
Cast:
Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara, Tomomi
Kobayashi, Takashi Matsuyama, Yuya Ozeki, Takako Fuji, Yui Ichikawa, Kanji
Tsuda, Kayoko Shibata, Hideo Sakaki, Miho Fujima, Yukako Kukuri, Shuri Matsuda,
Yoji Tanaka and Yoshiyuki Morishita.
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Synopsis:
The film’s
story takes place over a number of years and like the other Ju-on films,
is told in a non-linear order in six segments. The segments are presented in
the following order: Rika, Katsuya, Hitomi, Toyama, Izumi, and Kayako. The
synopsis shall be told in the chronological order of events. Several years ago, Takeo Saeki
murdered his wife Kayako after discovering she was in love with another man,
also murdering the family cat Mar and possibly his son Toshio. The murders
created a curse that revived the family as Onryo with Kayako’s ghost murdering
Takeo out on the street. Whoever enters the house in Nerima, Tokyo and it is
eventually consumed by the curse and it spreads to the place they die in,
consuming anyone in turn who goes there.
Review:
The story is told in “chapters”
each representing one victim of the Ju-On curse. This makes it difficult to say
too much about the plot as it involves so many characters. Much like Pulp Fiction, as the characters weave
in and out of each other’s lives so too do the chapters, flashing backwards and
forwards in time, slowly revealing the fate of it’s characters, how they came
to end up in the house and how they meet their unfortunate end.
Like previous Asian
horror movies Ringu, if there’s one thing that defines Ju-On it’s
the unsettling atmosphere it manages to create. The score is minimal, the
pacing slow and everything is painfully quiet. The kind of quiet that where if
you’re in your house alone at night, you’re never quite comfortable. It also
plays on more modern superstition, especially one of my worst strange childhood
fears, that one of the TV image that develops a disturbing and distressing life
of it’s own that you can’t control. As shadows take a life of their own and
phones let out piercing caterwauling sounds, Shimizu creates an unsettling
environment out of everything that plays tricks on the eye and ears and all the
silly irrational fears that for some reason still play on our minds.
What is refreshing
though, as always, is that like all good horror movies out of Asian, it never
compromises a happy ending or a feeling of closure to satisfy a focus group and
it never just throws an unnecessary.
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