Ju-On: The Grudge

June 19, 2004 | 15 Comments

Well, once again I reached my anime saturation point and suddenly felt the need to watch something creepy. I kept hearing how Ju-On: The Grudge is one of the scariest films that people have seen. That in itself, was enough to pique my interest. Then I heard that there is actually a remake in the making at the moment. The remake will actually be directed by the original director, Takashi Shimizu, but with some US casts like Sarah Michelle Gellar and Bill Pullman. While I'll probably check out the remake when it is released later on, I'd much prefer to see the original first and foremost since after all, this is the film that impresses the people that decided to do the remake. As usual, anything below this paragraph will be spoilery although I'll try my best not to reveal all of the plot details.

The film is structured in chapters with each character from a chapter rarely having a connection with other characters from another chapters except for the part where the curse strikes them all. The story begins with a black and white montage of a middle-aged man looking bloody and biting his own fingernails. When the man sees a black cat walking by in front of him, he decides to pick it up by force and judging by the sound the cat makes, it seems that the man ends up killing the cat. The film then shows a shot of a boy quickly hiding himself inside a wardrobe when he hears the noises that the cat makes. The brief montage ends with a shot of the man holding a razor and closing in on a dead body of a woman, who presumably, also got killed by the man.

The story then changes its focus to a social worker called Rika Nishina arriving at her workplace. Upon seeing her arrival, her supervisor tries to persuade her to take a case involving an old woman. Rika is hesitant to take on the case since she's only a volunteer social worker and hasn't got much experience in the field. After some persuasion, however, she accepts the job and goes to the address that's been given to her. Once she arrived there, she finds that the house is in a messed up state with items scattered all over the floor, as if the place hasn't been inhabited by anyone for a long time. After searching the house, Rika eventually finds the old woman in one of the rooms. The woman, however, seem unable to talk much, probably due to her frail condition.

While cleaning up the house, Rika finds a picture of a family that has been crumpled and cut in parts. She dismissed it as one of the family's pictures and proceeds to head upstairs. Rika then hears some strange noises coming from one of the rooms and decide to investigate it. Her investigation leads to a small room with a wardrobe. Upon opening the wardrobe, she sees a black cat inside the wardrobe and thinks that the animal is probably the source of noise. But much to her surprise, she also finds out that there is also a little boy sitting inside the wardrobe. She finds out that the boy's name is Toshio and when she can't get more information about the kid from either himself or the old woman, Rika decides to call the social welfare office.

Rika informs her supervisor at the welfare office that the owner of the house hasn't been seen at all and she wonders what she should do. The telephone conversation seems to end with Rika being told to remain at the house until help arrives. As she hangs up the phone, however, a phone in another room rings and when no one answers it, the answering machine reveals that the caller is none other than Hitomi, the sister of the house owner, Katsuya. Hitomi has apparently been worried about everyone who lives in the house, especially their mother. From Hitomi's message, it seems that Katsuya has not been in contact with her for the past couple of days. Upon hearing this, Rika tries to answer the phone but unfortunately the line has been cut off before she manages to do so.

Not knowing what else to do, Rika decides to return to the old woman's room to help the woman get back to sleep. However, once the woman lies down, she looks horrified and starts screaming and trying to cover her eyes. Not understanding why the old woman suddenly looks so scared, Rika tries to calm her down. However, when she looks at the corner of the room, she can clearly see a sillhoute of a woman with a long hair trying to strangle the old woman even though there is no one inside the room apart from Rika and the old woman. All of a sudden, the shadow turns around and reveals its face at Rika. Unable to contain her shock at what she just saw, Rika passes out in the room while behind her, Toshio looks on with mild expression.

Instead of continuing Rika's story, however, the film decides to jump backwards in timeline to give a look at what happened prior to Rika's arrival at the house. The film shows that a couple called Katsuya and Kazumi Tokunaga used to live in the house with Katsuya's mother, the old woman that Rika ends up taking care of in the first story. Katsuya and Kazumi are the typical Japanese husband and wife where Katsuya is the salaryman and Kazumi is the housewife. One day, once Katsuya left for work, Kazumi hears strange noises coming from an area of the house. Her investigation leads her to the second floor of the house and upon getting there, she ends up screaming but the film choses not to show what happened to her.

When Katsuya is back from his work, he's surprised to see the house still in messy condition and that his wife is nowhere to be seen. After checking to see that his mother is okay, Katsuya decides to go upstairs. He becomes horrified, however, when he sees his wife's body laying in a state of total shock. However, before he can manages to call a hospital for help, he senses the presence of another person behind him. Soon, Katsuya gets to experience the same horror that his wife presumably endured before he arrived home. Katsuya then gets to see his wife getting strangled by an unseen force. Upon seeing this, Katsuya's mannerism suddenly changes and he starts to bite his nails like the middle-aged guy featured in the black & white montage.

At the same time, the bell on the front door rings and it turns out that Katsuya's little sister, Hitomi, has arrived to pay a visit to her mother, brother, and sister in law. When no one answers the door, Hitomi decides to let herself in and greets her mother who's sleeping in the ground floor. Assuming that his brother and sister in law are not home yet, Hitomi decides to start preparing foods for them. While doing so, however, she starts hearing some noises coming from upstairs. When she goes to check it out, she finds her brother sitting in one of the stairs looking shell-shocked. Hitomi wonders what happened to him and where is her sister in law is at the moment. Katsuya, however, only tells her that today is not a good time to visit and asks his sister to go home now.

Hitomi is confused with her brother's strange behaviour but never the less agrees to do so. A couple of days later, Hitomi tries to ring Katsuya's house but when no one answers the phone, she has no choice but to only leave a message. While visiting the restroom, however, Hitomi realises that something has been stalking her. Scared of the situation, Hitomi decides to go back to her own apartment. She then receives a phone call from her brother asking about her apartment number because he wants to visit her. Not long after this, Katsuya is seen knocking the door to Hitomi's apartment. However, when Hitomi opens the door, no one stands outside the apartment. Overwhelmed by her fear, Hitomi decides to hide under her quilt. Unfortunately for her, that ends up being her undoing.

The film then returns to continue Rika's story. It is not known if a day has passed ever since she passed out or if it's only been a couple of hourse. Never the less, the third chapter begins with Rika's supervisor visiting the house. He is horrified when he finds the old woman dead and Rika in a state of shock to the point that her body is almost numb. Two detectives are eventually called in to investigate the house and they then try to give Katsuya's mobile phone a call. The attempt yields a rather scary result. They suddenly hear a mobile phone ringing from somewhere on the second floor. Further investigation makes them realise that the mobile phone noise comes from the attic. Upon getting there, they find Katsuya and Kazumi dead bodies sitting next to one another.

Meanwhile, Rika herself has now recovered at the hospital while being taken care of by her best friend, Mariko. One of the detectives eventually arrives to question her and upon seeing him, Rika immediately question if he managed to find the little boy called Toshio. The detectives, however, lets her know that they can't find any boy inside the house. Furthermore, he tells Rika that the picture Rika found inside the living room is actually not the picture of the Tokunagas. Upon further investigation, his partner finds out that apparently othe families who lived in the house prior to the Tokunagas have either disappeared or found dead. The investigation also revealed that there used to be a man called Takeo Saeki who murdered his own wife, Kayako.

Takeo apparently was found dead on the road by his neighbour while Kayako's body was found in the attic. The couple also had a child by the name of Toshio but it turns out his body was never found. Because of this, the detective tells Rika that even if Toshio survived, he would have been 11 years old by now instead of a 6 year-old boy. Rika seems puzzled by this and unknown to her, her supervisor, Hirohashi, was later found dead in a state not to disimilar to the Tokunagas. Because of this, the detectives decide to acquire the help of Yuji Toyama, an ex-detective who was involved in the investigation of the Saekis. Yuji apparently is the only person who is still alive after the investigation and live a rather quiet life with his wife and a daughter called Izumi.

It doesn't take long for Yuji, his daughter, and the two detectives to eventually be terrorised by the horror that came from that house. Yuji's case is especially interesting because when he was inside the house trying to burn it, he suddenly gets a brief glimpse of the future where his daughter, Izumi, enters the house together with her other friends. Anyway, when all of the victims have finally died/disappeared, there is one last person who is strangely still stay alive. Rika, who despite being tortured by multitude of nightmare of the ghostly Toshio and his mother, managed to stay alive. Then one day, she receives a phone call from her friend, Mariko telling her that she's inside a house taking care of a boy named Toshio. Rika has no other way but to return to the house to save her friend. The ending, which I am not going to reveal here, is quite scary and mind-boggling at the same time.

Impression:

I will admit that this is one terrifying film that left me having difficulty to sleep for a couple of hours after watching it. The prospect of sleeping underneath your own quilt never looked so frightening to me before I watched this film. Unfortunately, the story that drives this film is rather hard to understand even after realising that the timeline jumps around from one chapter to another. To begin with, I have no idea why the curse spreads from one person to another. Is this just the grudge of the murdered wife or is there more to it? What actually happened to Toshio? Why do some people end up dead while others simply disappeared? In addition to that, I also don't understand how Rika managed to survive longer than the rest of the people who got involved in the case after her, such as her supervisor. I can't seem to remember Rika doing anything special prior to the ending.

The ending itself left me baffled and unable to come up with any idea as to what happened. The closest explanation that I can came up with, as to why Rika has to half-covered her eyes, is similar to the idea of 'See no evil'. But I highly doubt that is the correct interpretation. I also don't understand how and why Yuji Toyama managed to get a peak into the future life of his daughter. I know that logic should not even be applied to begin with but the concept of time travel sounds far-fetched in a straight-out horror movie like this. Anyway, I've read that prior to this film, there are actually two straight to video films that explain some of the things in this theatrical feature. One of them is called Ju-On: The Curse, and the film boasts Chiaki Kuriyama as one of the principal casts. So if anyone has any idea as to how I can obtain these gems, I'd appreciate it if you can let me know.

© memento 2003