Saturday, April 27, 2024

The "Ju-On" Franchise

Ju-On: The Curse (2000)
Original Title: Ju’on (or Ju’en)
Translation: Grudge

 


Starring: Yûrei Yanagi, Yue, Ryôta Koyama, Hitomi Miwa, Asumi Miwa, Yumi Yoshiyuki, Kazushi Andô, Chiaki Kuriyama, Yoriko Dôguchi, Takako Fuji, Yûko Daike, Makoto Ashikawa
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Writer: Takashi Shimizu

 I saw the first Grudge film in the theater back in 2004. It was one of the few movies to legitimately scare me, right alongside Prince of Darkness (1987). Even though I was 22 at the time, I was still afraid of going to bed alone for a few weeks afterward. It was only in the past couple of years that I decided to revisit the Grudge franchise, starting with the first four Japanese films, and then the four Grudge movies, which I watched with my teenage daughter. I decided to watch the Japanese films again to write about for this site. So, let’s go.

T
he film is less than a coherent narrative and more of a series of vignettes, set in three different time periods, but played out of order.

“Toshio” and “Kayako” are the first segments to occur, chronologically speaking. It involves a teacher named Shunsuke Kobayashi (Yurei Yanagi, of the first two
Ringu films), who has been visiting his more truant students to find out how they’re doing. The next on his list is Toshio Saeki (Ryota Koyama), which is disconcerting to him, as he had gone to school with the boy’s mother, Kayako (Takako Fuji, who reprised the role in the other movies plus the Hollywood remake). Upon arriving at the house, he finds Toshio at home alone, battered and bruised, with the house in shambles. I’m not sure how Japanese law functions, but if this were the States, CPS and the police would be at the scene in no time. The longer Kobayashi stays at the house—waiting for the parents to arrive—the more likely he is to start sniffing around and discover what happened to Kayako…and why.

“Yuki,” “Mizuho” and “Kanna” are set later on, after the house has been sold to the Murakami family. Said family would be the matriarch Noriko (Yoriko Yoshiyumi, whose career appears to have been steeped in
pinku eiga) and her two adolescent children, Kanna (Kasumi Miwa, The Great Yokai War and Love + Pop) and Tsuyoshi (Kazushi Andoh, of 4444444444). Kanna has a full-time tutor, Yuki (Hitomi Miwa, of Crazy Lips), while Tsuyoshi has recently gotten himself a cute girlfriend, Mizuho (Chiaki Kurayama, of Battle Royale and Kill Bill Vol. 1). Yuki is hanging out at the Murakami household after her ward has gone to school to feed the class rabbit and is stalked by a creepy “croaking” voice. Kanna and Tsuyoshi disappear while at the school, and Mizuho finds herself being stalked by a ghostly Toshio.

Finally, there’s the “Kyoko” segment. Kyoko (Yuko Daike, of
Zatoichi and Fireworks) is a medium whose brother is the real estate agent in charge of selling the old Saeki residence. She immediately detects an evil presence in the house, warning her brother about selling it. It ends with her visiting the house, and one of the new residents staring creepily at her…

Ju-On: The Curse
is a very creepy movie, with some great visuals and a few memorable scenes. Some of the deaths and set pieces were incorporated into the Hollywood version of The Grudge, mainly the infamous scene involving the jawbone. What the film is not is a solid, coherent narrative. Part of the reason is that the rules are pretty simple: Go into the house, get haunted, and then die. I guess at this point of the story, not enough evil-ness has happened that anybody would be willing to really look into the wickedness of the place and do something about it.


Ju-On: The Curse 2 (2000)
Original Title: Ju’on 2 (or Ju’en)
Translation: Grudge 2

 


Starring: Ryôta Koyama, Takako Fuji, Yûko Daike, Makoto Ashikawa, Tomohiro Kaku, Kaori Fujii, Kaei Okina, Taizô Mizumura, Harumi Matsukaze
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Writer: Takashi Shimizu

 

The first time I watched Ju-On: The Curse 2, it was on YouTube in a video that had both Curse movies edited into a single entity. Watching them separately, I understand why: almost half of the film is simply a reprise of the “Kayako” and “Kyoko” segments of the first film. Why yes, this was a low-budget direct-to-video film. How could you tell?

I saw no difference between the two “Kayako” segments, but the “Kyoko” does have a little bit more than the first film. After discovering that her brother, Tatsuya (Makoto Ashikawa, of
Fireworks and Zatoichi), had sold the Saeki residence, Kyoko Suzuki (Yuko Daike) has a friend of hers do some digging into the history of the place. She learns of its sordid past and a little bit more: on the same night that Shunsuke Kobayashi was found dead in the Saeki residence, his wife was brutally murdered in their home. It is widely suspected that the culprit was Kayako’s husband. And what do you know? Tatsuya has recently divorced his wife, and he and his son Noboyuki (Tomohiro Kaku, of the “When They Cry” TV series) moved into the old Kobayashi residence.

Noboyuki has become increasingly strange and withdrawn. When Kyoko comes to check up on him, they both are witness to a vision of the murder of Manami Kobayashi at the hands of Takeo Saeki. And then he turns to face
them.

Then we get the “Tatsuya” segment. Following the events at the Kobayashi house, Kyoko has gone into a catatonic state. Tatsuya takes her and Noboyuki to his parents’ house to look after them. We learn that both Kyoko and the Suzuki patriarch (Taizo Mizumura) were both born with ability to see ghosts and other paranormal activity. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for the Saeki family curse to strike the Suzuki household. It also manifests itself at the origin house, where the Kitada family is now living. And from the looks of it, Kayako is set on possessing Mrs. Kitada (Kaori Fujii). And when it’s finally Noboyuki’s turn, we’ll see just how much the curse has spread…

In between these segments is one called “Kamio,” in which we learn that certain detectives have been investigating the Saeki residence. Unfortunately, the main detective, Yoshikawa, has suddenly gone mad. And his colleagues, Kamio and Îzuka, will learn about the dangers of being in contact with a cursed person.

The final segment, “Saori,” will come into play later.

On one hand,
Ju-On: The Curse 2 suffers from a 75-minute length, about 30 minutes of which consists of footage from the previous film. They could have skipped the “Kayako” reprise altogether, since at least the “Kyoko” segment has more footage than in the first film. That said, this movie does have something closer to a single narrative, as it mainly follows the fate of the Suzuki family (save the bookending segments), and in a linear fashion. It does build to a creepy climax in which we learn that if people don’t stop buying that darn residence and then coming into contact with other people (the nerve!), than all of Japan will be screwed eventually.

Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)
Original Title: Ju’on (or Ju’en)
Translation: Grudge

 


Starring: Megumi Okina, Misaki Itô, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa, Kanji Tsuda, Kayoko Shibata, Yukako Kukuri, Shuri Matsuda, Yôji Tanaka
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Writer: Takashi Shimizu

 

The two Ju-On: The Curse films must have been successful enough on video that somebody gave Takashi Shimizu a bigger budget and a guaranteed theatrical release. This is where Shimizu really hit pay dirt, as the film made its debut at an American film festival and eventually caught the attention of Sam Raimi, who produced an American remake á la The Ring. The film has since entered critics’ estimation as one of the top Japanese horror films ever. Not bad for what started off as a straight-to-video horror programmer.

Like the two
Curse films, Ju-On: The Grudge is less of a single narrative and more of a series of vignettes presented out of chronological order. However, this film does acknowledge the previous two movies and the final segment from Ju-On: The Curse 2 feeds into one of the plot threads.

“Rika,” “Katsuya” and “Hitomi” - An unspecified amount of time after the events of the previous film, the haunted Saeki residence has become the abode of the Tokunaga family. Namely, salaryman Katsuya (Kanji Tsuda, of
Shin Godzilla and Fireworks); his wife, Kazumi (Shuri Matsuda); and Katsuya’s elderly mother, Sachie (Chikako Isomura, of “Ultraman Taro”). Sachie is borderline catatonic and requires extra care, so an agency regular sends a social worker to check up on her. Katsuya also has a sister, Hitomi (Misaki Ito), who regularly visits the family.

Of course, we know that this family isn’t long for this world. Katsuya finds himself being possessed by the vengeful spirit of Takeo Saeki. Kazumi is terrorized by the ghost of Toshio. And when the designated social worker mysteriously disappears, the agency sends volunteer Rika Nishina (Megumi Okina, of
Shutter and Howling Village) to check up on Sachie. She arrives to find the house empty except for Sachie-san, but soon discovers that the two are not alone…

“Toyama” is set shortly thereafter, in which a pair of police detectives are investigating the events that led to the deaths of Sachie, Katsuya and Kazumi. Their investigation leads them to employ the services of Toyama (Yoji Tanaka, of
Kill Bill and Death Note), a retired detective who was the only person to investigate the Saeki residence that didn’t end up dead or crazy, or simply disappear. After watching the security footage that goes some way to explain the fate of Hitomi Tokunaga, Toyama decides that it’s time to simply burn that accursed place to the ground…

“Izumi” is set about six years in the future, with Toyama’s daughter, Izumi (Misa Uehara), being one of the girls who visits the house in the “Saori” segment from
Ju-On: The Curse 2. She leaves the house just minutes before Kayako descends upon her friends. Feeling survivor’s guilt, Izumi locks herself in her bedroom and covers the windows with newspapers so that she doesn’t have to see the restless spirits of her “missing” friends stare at her.

Finally, we have “Kayako,” which is set concurrently to the events of Izumi. Rika Nishina has so far been the longest-surviving “victim” of the Saeki curse. She’s 23 now and is working as a social worker and doing well for herself. Her friend, Mariko, is working as a school teacher. And when Mariko is called upon to visit her students, she finds herself visiting the home of one truant boy named Toshio…

With better music, better photography, higher quality film stock, and just better production values all around,
Ju-On: The Grudge is a step up in most respects from its two predecessors. The plot structure is still the same, with there being about three different strands for the viewer to follow. You don’t need to watch the previous films to make sense of the movie, although it does help. Especially since the aforementioned “Saori” segment feeds into this film. It is consistently creepy and sometimes downright scary.

When this movie was remade for Hollywood in 2004, Stephen Susco’s script was a composite of the first half of this movie and the bookending segments of the first
Ju-On: The Curse, with some scares and deaths cribbed from the latter. That makes sense, since it means that we had something closer to a single plotline, with the second story thread being treated as a series of flashbacks to explain the origin of the curse. Just switch Sarah Michelle Gellar for Rika, English teacher Bill Pullman for Mr. Kobayashi, a family of American expatriates for the Tokunaga family, and the rest is pretty much the same.

On the same token, the second half of this film served as the basis for
The Grudge 2 from 2006. Ambler Tamblyn, playing Gellar’s sister, becomes the Future Rika equivalent. Like The Ring 2, this does make a token (if unnecessary) attempt to dig into the past of Kayako in an attempt to find a way to stop the curse. The Izumi segment undergoes an ethnic switch to yet another Caucasian American expatriate, although it ends up transporting the curse to Chicago. It more or less ends in the same way, thus paving the way for the direct-to-video The Grudge 3, which is not set in Japan. That said, critics attacked The Grudge 2 for being too scattershot, since there were three different plotlines to follow in segments presented out of order.

 

Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (2003)
Original Title: Ju’on 2 (or Ju’en)
Translation: Grudge 2

 


Starring: Noriko Sakai, Chiharu Niiyama, Kei Horie, Yui Ichikawa, Ayumu Saitô, Emi Yamamoto, Erika Kuroishi, Kaoru Mizuki, Shinobu Yûki, Takako Fuji, Yuya Ozeki, Shingo Katsurayama
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Writer: Takashi Shimizu

 

It is interesting to note that despite this film coming out before the American remake of the first movie did, none of its story was used in The Grudge 2 or 3. From a storytelling perspective, this movie benefits from a more focused story, even if the events are told out of order and can be confusing at times. I mean, instead of jumping back and forth between two or three sets of characters on two or three timelines, this one focuses on but a single set of characters on one timeline (only jumbled). So, that’s a step up, right? Right?

Kyoko Harase (J-pop singer Noriko Sakai) is an actress known in Japan as “The Queen of Horror,” although her career is taking her in the direction of more “respectable” television roles. Beyond a promising TV career, she is also engaged to Masashi Ishikura (Ayumu Saito, of the
13 Assassins remake) and is carrying his child. Their wedding is planned for the near future, presumably before the baby bump becomes too visible. Her next gig is on a TV docudrama about haunted houses, the next episode of which will be filmed at…you guessed it…the Saeki residence.

From the get-go, things are weird, albeit not apparent to everyone. Tomoka Miura (Chiharu Niiyama, best known for
Godzilla-Mothra-King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack), the actress playing the reporter, starts hearing strange thumping sounds in her apartment days before shooting is to begin. On the day of shooting, costume and make-up girl Megumi (Emi Yamamoto, who was appearing in rape-themed pinku films as young as 11), who apparently has some degree of psychic sensitivity, has a bad feeling about the house, particularly a strange stain on the floor. Finally, one of the extras, Chiharu (Yui Ichikawa, of Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead), has a vision of ghost boy Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) patting Kyoko’s belly.

It goes without saying that after shooting is wrapped, things go to hell. Tomoka and her boyfriend, Noritaka (Kei Horie, who played the Yellow Ranger in “Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger,” the basis for “Power Rangers: Wild Force”), both die under mysterious circumstances. Megumi returns to the studio and then simply disappears, with no security footage attesting to her having left the place. Most striking is that Kyoko and her fiancé are in a car crash, which among other things, results in a miscarriage. But after Kyoko recovers from her injuries, a trip to the doctor confirms that she’s
three months pregnant.

Although you may argue that the
Ju-On films are more outright scary than the Ringu trilogy, the Ring films have a better grip on how Sadako’s curse functions. You watch the video. You are given seven days. Sadako appears to you when your time is up. You die. End of story. There is one established way of beating the curse. Later films may add more to the lore, and let’s not even talk about Rasen, but it’s easy to get the gist of it all. And the tape was the limiting factor in the curse.

Kayako’s curse, on the other hand, is free-form to the point of annoyance. You visit the house. You are cursed. Kayako and Toshio haunt you for a day, or a week, or even several years. And then they come for you. And you die. Or just disappear. Whatever tickles Kayako’s fancy at the moment. And you get incorporated into the curse. Except for when you don’t. And sometimes
your house also gets cursed. Except for when it doesn’t. And anyone who meets a cursed person, but hasn’t been in the house, gets cursed. Except for when they don’t.

The last part is really a sticking point for me, since it reminds me of the problem I had with
Tomie’s lore, especially in the anthology film (which served as part two of the series). There’s no established limitation to the curse that prevents a Drexler’s Grey Goo scenario from stemming from a single curse. Think about it: the first time a peasant brutally kills his daughter after learning that she has been supplementing the family income at the local brothel, or some daimyo’s concubine and her samurai lover hack her husband to death to hide their illicit affair, a ju-on curse will start. And the people in that household will interact with the location. And then with people in the town or village. And then some merchant is going to get cursed for selling rice to a daimyo’s servant and take it to another village. And that village will get cursed. And within a generation or two, all of Japan is reduced to tormented spirits under the control of the first murdered person.

I also didn’t care for the final shot, since it contradicts what we know about Kayako. She isn’t inherently evil, like Sadako was hinted at being. She was weird, socially awkward and obsessive over a guy she liked (even after she got married), but she was not evil. The portrayal of her as such in that final scene didn’t strike me as being consistent with the narrative thus established. No sir, I don’t like it.

That said, the free-form approach to the “curse” gives
Ju-On: The Grudge 2 a wholly irrational feel, much like the best work of Lucio Fulci. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it does contribute to an overwhelming sense of mounting dread. If you can accept the curse as being so unfettered by logic that it can do what it does, you should find something to enjoy in this film.

  

Ju-On: White Ghost (2009)
Original Title: Ju’on: Shiroi Rojo
Translation: Grudge: Old White Woman

 


Starring: Akina Minami, Natsuki Kasa, Hiroki Suzuki, Mihiro, Aimi Nakamura, Marika Fukunaga, Chie Amemiya, Akiko Hoshino, Takuji Suzuki, Tsuyoshi Muro, Ichirōta Miyakawa, Chinami Iwamoto, Shūsei Uto
Director: Ryuta Miyake
Writer: Ryuta Miyake

 

The Ju-On: White Ghost/Black Ghost films were made in 2009 as a way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the series, even though by that point, the only films being made were in Hollywood. They are unrelated in story to the four previous Japanese movies, save a random cameo by ghost boy Toshio (now played by Shusei Uto) that only serves to muddle the film’s scant story.

The Isobe family has recently moved into a haunted house. You might think that is a spoiler. But if you’re watching
Ju-On: White Ghost, you’ve probably seen all the other movies in the franchise. Therefore, you as the viewer know that moving into any house in a Ju-On film is risky business. The Isobe family consists of Kentaro (Eiichi Okubo), the patriarch; Miho (Sumire Arai), his trophy wife; Atsushi (Tsuyoshi Muro, of Hentai Kamen), Kentaro’s adult son; Junko (Aimi Nakamura), Kentaro’s adult daughter; Mirai (Chinami Iwamoto), Junko’s daughter; and Haru (Akiko Yoshino, of Tales of Terror from Tokyo and All Over Japan: The Movie), Kentaro’s dementia-ravaged mother.

The family dynamic is a bit skewed. Kentaro is the disapproving father who’s always bitter because his son hasn’t passed the Japanese equivalent to the BAR exam. He also doesn’t appreciate that Junko is a single mother and occasionally wonders aloud why his daughter didn’t abort Mirai. Aloud! Miho is to all appearances the man’s second wife and has taken on the role as homemaker, even though that bastard Kentaro seems to blame
her for his son’s screw-ups. And grandma Haru likes to put on wigs and make-up when she’s not playing with her grandson’s favorite basketball.

That said, Atsushi the son really does have a problem. Unlike the Saeki residence, this particular house exerts a
Shining or Amityville influence on him. I would initially assume that he is just a horrible scuzz-bucket. But we do catch glimpses of a ghost wandering around the house to let us know that the place is haunted. In any case, Atsushi’s descent into madness begins with his sexual abusing his niece. Some of this is witnessed by one of her school friends, Akane (Natsuke Kasa), although she is a bit too young to help. And once Atsushi fails his mock BAR exam, the pressure will be too much and the man will simply snap. And in a Ju-On film, we know what that means…

Like the other movies, the story is told out of order and jumps back and forth between timelines. Part of the film involves Akane as a teenager, now played by Akina Minami (of “Magical Heroine Magimajo Pures!”). Some of the segments involve other auxiliary characters, like the delivery boy who stumbles upon the aftermath of Atsushi’s bloodbath. The denouement is probably the “happiest” we’ve seen in a
Ju-On film up to this point.

The film suffers from some awful makeup effects. One of the ghosts—presumably of Haru—is a short person in a goofy mask running at the camera. And strangely enough, there was one instance where it spooked me. I’m not sure how to explain it. It’s like
Psycho when Bate’s “mother” runs into frame out of nowhere and you can’t help but jump. But that mask, apparently based on Sachie from Ju-On: The Grudge, was kind of silly.

T
he film is at its best when it’s ripping off Amityville Horror 2 instead of playing to the usual Ju-On tropes. The scenes of Atsushi interacting with Mirai are genuinely uncomfortable and her final fate recalls the endurance test that was Untold Story. Those scenes, plus one or two jump scares, make the film worth a view.

 

 

Ju-On: Black Ghost (2009)
Original Title: Ju’on: Kuroi Shōjo
Translation: Grudge: Black Young Girl

 


Starring: Ai Kago, Kōji Seto, Yuri Nakamura, Maria Takagi, Hana Matsumoto, Yuno Nakazono, Masanobu Katsumura, Shūsei Uto
Director: Mari Asato
Writer: Mari Asato

 

Apparently, I watched these movies out of order—despite their being released on the same day in Japan—as this movie takes place before the events of Ju-On: White Ghost and goes some way to explain why the house in the aforementioned film is haunted. I’m assuming that Takashi Shimizu by this point was too high and mighty to go back to Toei Video, because both of these films were helmed by other directors. In this case, it’s Mari Asato, a female director who seems to dabble in horror, suspense, and even did a film called Samurai Chicks. In this case, it’s sorta The Grudge Meets The Manitou.

Fukie Yokota (Hana Matsumoto) is a little girl who has some problems. One day, she simply collapses in her classroom, which is thankfully witnessed by a little boy her age. He informs their teacher, who takes her to infirmary. The school nurse dismisses the episode as a mild episode of anemia, and Fukie’s mother, Kiwako (Maria Takagi, of
Tokyo Zombie and Noroi, which incidentally is another way of pronouncing the Kanji for Ju-On) comes to pick her up. It is implied that her parents are estranged; Kiwako is upset with Mr. Yokota (Masanobu Katsumura, of Sonatine and Blade of the Immortal) when he suggests taking his daughter out to eat, instead of leaving her at home. We also learn that Yokota has been hitting on one of his employees, Ayano (Atashira’s Yuko Nakazono), making a desperate bid to get into her panties.

That same evening, Fukie goes into a trance and tells her dad that he’s going to kill a woman with his own hands. And that’s after she has a fit and collapses again. Kiwako takes her to the hospital, but doesn’t find anything wrong with her head. So, she takes her daughter to a psychologist instead. The psychologist performs a hypnotism routine on the girl, trying to bring back latent memories
of her in her mother’s womb. She has another fit, screaming something about “Why didn’t you want to give birth to me?” It’s back to the hospital for Fukie.

This is where it gets weird. In the next sequence of medical exams, the doctors discover a large cyst around her pubis area. They hypothesize that the cyst was actually a twin, but somehow Fukie absorbed it into her. It has been growing within her ever since. That piece of information turns the Superstition Dial in Kiwako up to 11. But…Kiwako has a sister, Mariko Mazuoka (Yuri Nakamura, of
The Sylvian Experiments) who just happens to be an exorcist. If all this craziness is caused by the angry spirit of the unborn child, then Mariko has the wherewithal to send the spirit on its way. But the first scene of the film should be an indicator of what direction that’s gonna go…

I like the premise of the villain being a malignant (in more ways than one) teratoma. I think the film handles the idea well and while not scary, it certainly makes for interesting viewing and a nice departure from four films’ worth of the Saeki family curse. Where I think the movie falters is in the out-of-order arrangement of the scenes, which makes it confusing as to when the deaths of certain auxiliary characters occur. I think
Ju-On: White Ghost did a better job in placing the visual cues to help the viewer put the puzzle pieces in order. That said, this film benefits from better make-up effects (and some CGI) than White Ghost. But the use of the Kayako’s infamous “death rattle” is out of place in this particular story.

Something that doesn’t make total sense is how this film leads into
White Ghost. [Warning: Spoiler Alert!] You see, the Mazuoka residence is the place that the Isobe family from White Ghost moves into. Given what happens to Mariko and her family, I can understand there being a ju-on curse in that particular residence. However, shortly before the “shocker” finale of Black Ghost, Kiwako receives a heavenly message from Mariko suggesting that she is not an angry spirit. But it is an apparition from Mariko in White Ghost that leads Atsushi into one of the rooms, where he is subsequently possessed. I’m really not sure what to make of that, only that two writer-directors make separate films in parallel can lead to certain details being bungled. There is also the question of “If Atsushi was possessed by a member of the Mazuoka family, why did he become a pedophile?” Was there something wrong with Mariko’s husband that was simply not brought up in Black Ghost?

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