Plot
A mysterious and vengeful spirit marks and pursues anybody who dares enter the house in which it resides.
Release Year: 2002
Rating: 6.6/10 (14,863 voted)
Critic's Score: 48/100
Director:
Takashi Shimizu
Stars: Megumi Okina, Misaki Itô, Misa Uehara
Storyline In Japan, when the volunteer social assistant Rika Nishina is assigned to visit a family, she is cursed and chased by two revengeful fiends: Kayako, a woman brutally murdered by her husband and her son Toshio. Each person that lives or visits the haunted house is murdered or disappears.
Opening Weekend: €498,331
(Spain)
(16 November 2003)
(71 Screens)
Gross: $325,661
(USA)
(5 December 2004)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Goofs:
Continuity:
When Rika's in the shower, she has a lot of shampoo in her hair. Yet right before Kayoko's hand appears, the shampoo vanishes.
Quotes:
[repeated line]
Hirohashi:
Thanks for the effort.
User Review
Occasionally awkward, but very good overall
Rating: 9/10
Rika Nishina (Megumi Okina) works for a social services agency in
Tokyo, although she's never seen any clients. When a new case comes in
and they're short on staff, her boss has to send her out. Her first
case is a doozy. When she enters the client's home, no one seems to be
there, and the house is a mess. She hears scraping on a door--the old
woman she is to care for is there, but in a semi-catatonic state. Soon
after, she learns that there is much more wrong than bad housekeeping
and a neglected old woman. There just may be threatening supernatural
forces behind the scenes.
This film is really the third in the Japanese Ju-On series. I won't
usually watch a series out of order, but this is the only Ju-On film
officially and thus easily available in the U.S. I was very anxious to
watch the American remake, The Grudge (2004), and actually watched it
the day before watching this film.
The first 40-something minutes are closest to the American remake, but
it was surprising that this film is much more linear. It's also more
episodic. Neither of those facts are negative here, and both lend to a
somewhat easier understanding of the broader mythology behind the Ju-On
"monsters", which is presented much more clearly in this film. However,
the episodic nature also means that the viewer has to pay attention to
the various characters and their names, or there is a good chance that
one will get lost--this story touches on many different people, in many
different scenarios. Occasionally, there are characters brought into
each other's episodes, sometimes as subtly as a name mentioned in a
news report. These cross-references, which can also slightly break the
linear timeline, are effective if one is alert.
There are things that writer/director Takashi Shimizu does better in
this version, and things he does better in the American version. In
this version, I loved the brutal opening sequence. Although it's
somewhat present towards the end of the American version, it is much
more effective here. I enjoyed the more traditional Japanese home--this
film was shot on location in an actual house, whereas the American
remake was shot on a house constructed on a soundstage. The Japanese
house is more claustrophobic. On the other hand, the soundstage house
was a bit grungier, which works nicely in the context of the remake. I
liked this film's transition in the famous "stair crawling" scene
(although I thought the flashbacks weren't necessary), and I also loved
some of the more dissonant music here.
The biggest differences occur after the first forty minutes, when
Shimizu expands the number of monsters. The film seems to threaten a
Romero-like plague that I'd like to see explored more in other Ju-On
films (if that hasn't been done already).
The bottom line though is that this is a nicely atmospheric horror
film, with a creepy scene per minute. There were a couple very minor
flaws--occasionally awkward performances or editing being the primary
one, but overall this is highly recommended. It earned a 9 out of 10
from me.
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