| Product: |
Ju-On - The Grudge (DVD) |
| Date: |
08/12/06 (102 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Truly scary at times
Disadvantages: Too disjointed, poor special effects
I've been working my way through a selection of Korean and Japanese horror films recently and this is my latest acquisition. I'm not sure why I like Asian horror so much, but I do think that having to read subtitles adds to the atmosphere. I had high expectations of this film. I've heard a lot about it and read some excellent reviews. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I expected; there are certainly much better Asian horror films out there. Just to confirm, I am reviewing the original Japanese version here, not the American version based on the original.
The story
The centre of the story is a house, rather than a character. A young social worker is called to the house of an elderly lady, but soon finds out that something strange is going on - the house has been trashed, the old lady is clearly terrified to death and there is a strange child locked in a cupboard. It soon becomes clear that there is something evil about the house; when the police investigate, they find that several years before, a husband murdered his wife in a fit of rage. This evilness and anger seems to have remained in the house, affecting everyone who steps into it.
One by one, all the people who set foot in the house, including the family that live there and all visitors, meet with some kind of accident leading to their death. Is there anything that can be done to stop the 'grudge'? And who is the little boy that constantly appears?
The characters
There are a bewildering amount of characters in the film and there is no-one that has a main role. However, there are some performances that are better than others. I really enjoyed that of Rika, the young social worker, played by Misaki Ito. She is the first character to whom we are introduced, which is perhaps one reason that she stands out in my mind. However, I found her performance very realistic; her fear on entering the house and finding out that all is not as it should be is truly eerie and sent shivers down my spine.
The little boy, Toshio, played by Yuya Ozeki, is another good performance. He says very little, no more than his name, but for such a young child, he did an excellent job at making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I much preferred him when he had less make-up on and it was left to his eyes and face to express his feelings; at times he was plastered in white make-up, which I thought looked inexpertly added.
Another character who says virtually nothing, but still manages to be deeply scary is the elderly woman, the mother of the owner of the house and played by Chikako Isomura. Her role is small, but her wide, staring eyes and inability to communicate with the other characters scared me to death.
There are a variety of other characters, including the husband and wife that own the house, the husband's sister, another social worker, four schoolgirls and two policemen, all of whom are affected by the house. None of them particularly stood out for me, mainly because they weren't given the chance to show what they could do. I think this is one flaw of the film. I think there should have been fewer characters and perhaps the story should have been told by one character in particular. Instead, we are constantly skipping from character to character and at first it is difficult to tell if there is a link between any of them.
Technical bits
Classification: 15. There are some disturbing images of dead bodies, but very few really gory ones.
Running time: 92 minutes
Conclusion
I was disappointed by this film. I have seen much better Asian horror films than this. My main problem was the disjointedness of the story. In general, I don't think that films that skip between a number of characters works particularly well. In this case, there were so many, that although there were obvious links between the characters and many appeared in other characters' stories, I didn't recognise them because they simply hadn't been on the screen for long enough. On top of that, it seemed to go backwards and forwards in time, which also proved confusing.
Another problem was the story itself. Although I am not particularly familiar with Japanese culture, this was not a problem, but I did find it hard to believe the amount of time it took before anyone realised that people kept dying because of what had happened in the house in the past. Even when they had realised, it didn't keep them away from the house. Hello!! This annoyed me and definitely affected my enjoyment of the film.
Thirdly, I thought the special effects were pretty rubbish. Images of the child and the murdered wife were more laughable than scary. There was too much make-up used, too much floating around in the air and not enough subtlety, which I always find creepier than actually being able to see images.
On the plus side, it is a horror/ghost story far superior to any western ones I have seen. It kept me intrigued from beginning to end; I wanted to know what happened. The fact that it is Japanese was irrelevant to me; there were no cultural misunderstandings and the language was not a problem - I found the subtitles to be excellent and there is a dubbing option if you really dislike subtitles. The background music was also very effective. The noises that the small boy and the (original) murdered woman make are truly chilling and the music complimented this atmosphere perfectly. There were also some very odd camera angles which added to the eeriness and were very well done.
In conclusion, I do recommend this film, with the caveat that there are much better Asian horror films out there. I personally tend to prefer Korean films such as A Tale of Two Sisters and the Vengeance series. However, if you are new to the genre, or haven't yet been Asian horror'd out, you will probably enjoy it. Three stars.
I watched the film version, but the DVD is available from play.com for £4.99.
Summary: Not as good as I was expecting
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