THE GRUDGE

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Director: Takashi Shimizu
Screenplay: Stephen Susco
Co-starring: Jason Behr, Clea DuVall
US Release Date: 22 October 2004
Length: 92 minutes (theatrical release)
Genre: Horror

Takashi Shimizu directed this remake of the Japanese horror film Ju-on. With Jason Behr, Ted Raimi, and William Mapother. An American nurse living and working in Tokyo is exposed to a supernatural curse that seems to induce suicide. For some reason this film is shot largely in hallways and stairwells.

Tod Martin, writing for PopHorror, said: The Grudge is the American remake of the Japanese horror film Ju-On: The Grudge from 2002 and features some of the same people that were involved with the original. Remember when I said that I didn’t think it would be scary? I was wrong. Very, very wrong. I’ll admit that it scared the Hell out of me when I saw it and I had many sleepless nights for weeks afterward because I couldn’t get certain scenes from it out of my mind. As a matter of fact, it was the first movie to truly scare me for years and to this day it still bothers me whenever I think about it occasionally (which is usually late at night when I’m trying to go to sleep and I end up creeping myself out as a result). It’s the last movie that I have seen that has managed to actually scare me, and I know that I am not alone as I know a lot of other people that it terrified as well.

TRAILER

Yuya Ozeki, Takako Fuji, and Takashi Matsuyama, who play the Saeki family, all appeared in Ju-on in the same roles).

The film played in 3,348 theatres in the US before being released on DVD. It grossed $110,359,362.

THE GRUDGE can be streamed on The CW website

THE GRUDGE 2

Director: Takashi Shimizu
Written by: Stephen Susco, Takashi Shimizu
Gellar's role: Karen Davis
With: Amber Tamblyn, Ariel Kebbel, Teresa Palmer
Length: 102 minutes
Genre: Horror
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Release date: 13 October 2006

In Tokyo, a young woman (Tamblyn) is exposed to the same curse that afflicted her sister (Gellar) in the first film. Kayako, the ghost from the first film, is still holding her grudge. She really doesn't want anyone coming to her house. When three schoolgirls do that, she follows one of them all the way to Chicago.

Robert A Tuba reviewed the film for Christian Answers: "'The Grudge 2' continues the story as Karen’s sister, Aubrey (Amber Tamblyn) is drafted by their mom to bring Karen back from Tokyo. Reluctantly, Aubrey takes the assignment. However, Karen dies shortly after Aubrey gets to Tokyo, and Aubrey decides to investigate the mysterious house that is the root of her sister’s death. With a journalist in tow, Aubrey vows to not return home until she finds out what caused her sister’s death...Screenwriter Stephen Susco, who used two interwoven stories to tell the first Grudge, now tries to use three interlaced stories in different time periods. Along with the tale of two sisters, the film also follows a couple of Tokyo schoolgirls who play a prank on another girl by locking her inside one of the house’s closets. All become “infected” with the curse. Finally, the film begins and ends with a story about a newly formed family that starts to notice and experience weird things in their apartment building when a stranger inhabits the apartment next door."

TRAILER

Misako Uno, who plays Miyuki, is a member of the pop group ATTACK ALL AROUND. Other members of the group are: Takahiro Nishijima, Naoya Urata, Mitsuhiro Hidaka, Shinjiro Atae, Shuta Sueyoshi, and Chiaki Ito.

The film played in 3,214 theatres in the US before being released on DVD. It grossed $39,143,839.

THE GRUDGE 2 can be streamed on PLEX.

JU-ON

Written and directed by:Takashi Shimizu
Starring:
Megumi Okina as Rika Nishina
Misaki Itô as Hitomi Tokunaga
Misa Uehara as Izumi Tôyama
Yui Ichikawa as Chiharu
Kanji Tsuda as Katsuya Tokunaga
Kayoko Shibata as Mariko
Yukako Kukuri as Miyuki
Shuri Matsuda as Kazumi Tokunaga
Release date: 25 January 2003

Richard Schieb of Moria explained that Ju-On "...is not a stand-alone film but is actually the third in a series. The first was Ju-on (2000), which similarly told a series of connected episodes about a haunting centred around a house, and was followed by Ju-on 2 (2000), which continued in the same vein. Both were directed by Takashi Shimizu but intended for video rather than theatrical release and much lower budgeted. Both also feature the ghost boy and long-haired woman and follow the same basic idea of everybody who comes in contact with them being fatally haunted. (Prior to this, Takashi Shimizu delivered the basics of what would become the Ju-on films with the tv movie School Ghost Story G (1998) where was hired to direct two of the four segments). Ju-on: The Grudge is a big-screen reworking of the two video films."

YouTube has both films from 2000: Ju On: The Curse 1 & 2 Combo Cut with English Subs

Michael G McDunnah wrote for The Unaffiliated Critic: "One of the reasons I find Ju-On so creepy is that it really seems to have no other mission statement but to creep you out. The film is composed of six vignettes, each documenting one particular character's encounter with the ghosts—or yurei—who haunt a small house where a murder-suicide took place. The six stories are presented out of chronological order, and are only loosely linked: there is very little in the way of over-arching story. It's just concentrated scares: it's cinema as haunted funhouse, not as narrative."

This is quite different from the Westernized version with Gellar. In Ju-On, one is not simply dealing with ghosts. One is dealing with ghost-zombie hybrids. These beasties show up on security cameras (in fact they seem to be conscious of being recorded on them). They leave tiny toys lying around. And they manifest in several different ways. The contortionist is there, same as in the Gellar movie, but there is also a kind of vaguely humanoid smoke creature, and zombie-like full-on humanoid manifestations that are solid enough to break down doors.

There is a general lack of character development. People in this film exist for the purpose of being eaten by the zombie-ghosts. Or, in the case of the police, to stop the zombie-ghosts. And they are strange people. If you looked up the stairs, saw a black cat that wasn't supposed to be there, and saw it snatched away by rather pale looking hands that also weren't supposed to be there, would you go upstairs to investigate further? Or would you phone the authorities? In the Gellar film, her inquisitiveness was based on the notion that someone might have been imprisoned in a closet. In this one, people are just weirdly curious and without caution.

When they made THE GRUDGE, they left out a lot of what was in the screenplay so that they could develop the characters a bit and not have the film run for four hours. When THE GRUDGE was a big hit, they had a list of scenes remaining for a sequel.

Karen Davis in THE GRUDGE is an amalgam of several characters from JU-ON.

Look for the bloodshot eyes of the smoke creature. It is very rare in JU-ON to see any bright, vivid colours.

TRAILER

JU-ON and its sequel JU-ON 2 can be streamed on TUBI.

JU-ON, THE GRUDGE, and THE GRUDGE 2 all are available on both DVD and Blu-ray.