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Nation of Ori­gin: Japan

Rat­ings:
Justin: 2 out of 5
Kim: 2 ^1/2 out of 5
Mike: 3 out of 5

Notes:

Hon­estly, I don’t know what America’s obses­sion with all things Japan­ese comes from. Sure they are cute and polite and make neat elec­tronic gad­gets and decent auto­mo­biles, but I don’t get what made Ju-On and its Amer­i­can remake so pop­u­lar. Remem­ber in the last review where I said “haunted house” movies are lame because the pro­tag­o­nists always have the option of leav­ing and never com­ing back? Well, you’d think Ju-On would be awe­some because it removes that intrin­sic plot-hole by mak­ing the ghosts a kind of com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­ease pass­able from peo­ple who come into con­tact with the house to the peo­ple who come into con­tact with those peo­ple (and they tell two friends, and they two friends, and so on and so on).  Because I have not seen Ju-On 2, I am left to assume they film­mak­ers develop some kind of avian flu face mask that keeps The Grudge from passing.

I get the feel­ing that these films were way more intense to Japan­ese audi­ences who bought into the “venge­ful ghost” super­sti­tions, because I don’t really see these ghosts as being that venge­ful. The ghosts in Pol­ter­geist were scarier and that was a Spiel­berg pic­ture! In most of the exam­ples fea­tured in this film, the pos­ses­sion just makes the vic­tim crazy then they get list­less and cata­tonic– which, really, is noth­ing a stack of manga can’t do.

The gen­eral rule of haunted house films is that they are just kind of creepy, not so much scary and this is no excep­ton. Apart from that really cool gur­gling sound and some creepy lit­tle kid, there’s not a whole lot going on in Ju-On that will scare you.