Ju-on 2

I'm happy to say that, after a slight disappointment with 'Ju On: The Grudge,' the series returns to form with this installment.

Just when you thought Takashi Shimizu had done everything there was to do with 'Ju On,' this third sequel (and second theatrical film) takes things in a slightly new direction...and gives us some of the most terrifying scenes yet.

Yes, Toshio and his Mum are still on the prowl. Yes, the plot is told in the same disjointed segment style. But, without spoiling the surprises, some new and unexpected twists are added to the mythology. And just as expected, there are plenty of images and sounds that will haunt you till your dying day.

I can't wait to see what Shimizu has in store with the fifth film (the American installment) and dread the thought of seeing these images on a big screen!

The rage of Kayako and her son Toshio continue in this sequel to "Ju-On: The Grudge." Creepier and scarier than the first film, Ju-On 2 begins with a young couple and a tragic car accident which leaves a pregnant television star named Kyoko devastated. With her fiancé in a coma and her unborn baby supposedly lost, she continues with her blossoming career in horror films. But when she agrees to appear in a pseudo-documentary about the "haunted house" where Kayako and Toshio still "reside," the virus of the Grudge begins anew. Soon, everyone involved with the production is missing or dead, and Kyoko, who has recently been informed that her baby is not lost after all, begins to realize that what she is carrying may not be hers at all.

Ju-On 2 is definitely much more scarier than its predecessor. Disturbing sound effects, jerky camera movements and one dizzy nightmarish scene after another literally left me reeling, feeling as confused and freaked out as the characters in the film. There are some great visual effects here; Kayako and her wild hair spread over a ceiling, tendrils dropping down into lethal nooses; a wig come to hideous life and the ghostly blue Toshio staring out of the darkness. The ending was a work of morbid art, leaving me quite stunned. "Ju-On 2" has proved beyond a doubt that sequels are not always a bad thing, and sometimes, they're even better!

Highly recommended!

By now, most audiences will be fairly familiar with the Japanese series of films known as Ju On: The Grudge; the phenomenally successful saga that began with the straight to video projects Ju On: The Curse, parts 1 and 2 - in which jealousy and adultery in a quaint Japanese suburb leads to an awful murder that marks the house for anyone who subsequently enters it - right the way through to the larger-budgeted Hollywood remake of the film and it's equally glossy sequel. Subsequent films following on from The Curse have taken the initial murder as their starting point and created around it a film of loosely connected horror vignettes, mostly in which a series of hapless characters end up in the film's iconic haunted house and then find themselves marked for death by the two most prominent apparitions of the story.

If you have already seen the American re-make of The Grudge with Sarah Michelle Geller then there's a good chance that this follow up to the Japanese original will come as something of shock. Unlike its US counterpart, this grudge features no real central character and has no real plot development (at least, not in the traditional sense). I personally don't see this as a bad thing, as it allows director Takashi Shimizu to concentrate on crafting a number of scenes of gripping high tension - as the collection of disparate innocents (this time a TV crew shooting a horror film based upon the events of the original film) who unknowingly come into contact with the infamous house and then must come to terms with the unexplainable horror that is happening all around them. However, viewers who look for things like narrative closure, explanations of plot developments and something approaching a hero that they can root for might be sorely disappointed.

As I mentioned above, this version of The Grudge instead strings together a series of inter-woven scenes that establish the significance of the curse whist setting up a number of fantastic, edge-of-your seat moments of haunted house horror. This isn't a gritty gore-fest with annoying, smug, ultra-cynical characters (as seems to be the trend with much contemporary horror - think Wolf Creek, Hostel, Cabin Fever, The Hills Have Eyes remake and 28 Weeks Later) but rather, the kind of horror that should appeal to anyone who has had to walk home late at night through an empty park and felt the presence of someone (or something) following closely behind. Your heart starts racing as you quicken your step and become convinced that you can hear footsteps rapidly approaching from the left of your shoulder! When you finally pick up the courage to turn around and look, you realise your mind has been playing tricks on you, but the thrill was still heart-stopping regardless.

I prefer this kind of horror, which is why I'm such a huge fan of the horror films coming out of Japan, China and North Korea; great works like The Eye trilogy, Wishing Stairs, Abnormal Beauty, Premonition, Infection, Chaos, A Tale of Two Sisters and Takashi Shimizu's own Grudge-follow up Reincarnation. It's slow moving and slow building, almost ambient even; often coming at you from the rear speakers rather than full and on in your face, which for me, really creates a great, eerie atmosphere that works perfectly if you're watching it at 1:30 AM and have to pause for a toilet break and to let the dog out to stretch her legs.

Unlike a lot of his American contemporaries, Takashi Shimizu realises that horror isn't about what you see, but what you don't see, and with this in mind he saves any prolonged glimpses of our ghostly antagonists until right towards the very end. He also manages to create a wonderful feeling of isolation, alienation and hopeless emptiness; not only from the haunted house so central to the story, but even in the brightly-lit suburban streets, schools, office blocks and apartment buildings that our characters inhabit. The film is also shot very simply and traditionally, with none of the hyper-cutting and frantic camera movements of western horror, which again, gives the Grudge a more believable and authentic feeling that only heightens the senses of horror and tension. This is also helped by the wonderful performances of the cast who manage to ably convey the right sense of fraught emotion without descending into screaming histrionics.

For me, The Grudge 2 is easily as great the first instalment; although some viewers may find the more outrageous elements of the closing scenes to be a little too much (I'm guessing the planned third instalment will pick up on and explain some of these ideas, but we'll have to wait and see). This is horror for those who want chills rather than spills, and those who like to invest some serious time in something that is slower, more deliberate and more dramatic than the usual stalk and slash type stuff (not that I don't love that kind of horror as well, but it's nice to have an intelligent alternative). As mentioned previously, there will be some viewers who won't want to invest their time in such a film that has no obvious sense of narrative and no single identifiable character, but at the end of the day, that's their decision. But they're clearly missing out!

This is a sequel of 'Ju-on' , the creepy and terrifying film that revolutionized Japanese horror cinema, a profitable picture that created a hit franchise. Basing on the premise: ¨When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born¨. While their curse spreads on, the ghosts find their chance to live once again through the pregnancy of a cursed woman. While driving , the pregnant horror-movie actress Kyôko Harase (Noriko Sakai) and her boyfriend suffer a car crash caused by a creepy ghost kid who suddenly shows up. Kyôko loses her baby and her fiancé winds up in a coma. Kyôko was cursed together with a television crew when they were filming a show in the haunted house where Kayako was brutally murdered by her husband years ago, events depicted in Ju-on (2002). The actress working in Tokyo is exposed to a mysterious supernatural curse, she encounters a terrible spirit who is vengeful and often possesses its victims, one that locks a person in a powerful rage before claiming their life and spreading to another victim. Later on, each member of the cinematographic team dies or missing, Kyôko is informed that she has a fetus in her womb . After that, a series of horrifying and mysterious deaths start to occur, with the spirit passing its curse onto each victim. She must now find a way to break this spell, before she becomes its next victim !. Do you have a grudge? It never forgets !. Once you see it, you can never forget !. Once it sees you, you can never escape !. The whole time I was in that house, I knew something was wrong !. They say that when someone dies in a powerful rage. A curse is made. The curse is about to claim another victim. Even if you die, you can never escape !.

The premise of this Japan setting, low resolution, short gloss film simply transcribes the standard of the horrible curses and haunted houses exegesis. Director builts his film out of chronologically jumbled set pieces. Each proceeds by an alternative pattern of tense lulls and pay-off jolts. The resentment that resides in someone who dies in deep anger generates a painful curse, which is concentrated in the places that the deceased frequented in life. This curse works on those who visit him, constantly renewing his legacy and unleashing a spiral of panic. The type of ghost is based on the Japanese legend of the Onryo, a vengeful spirit that can actually physically manifest itself to attack and kill victims. 'Ju-on 1 and 2' are two successful horror movies which themselves borrrowed liberally from Hideo Nakata's 'Ring' and 'Dark Water'. The overdeterminated approach preempts the character shadings or social subtext that Japanese horror maestro Nakata prizes, while the soundtrack thumps and screaming sounds head off any genuine scares.

The Grudge and The Grudge II, with its insane combination of terror and raw emotions, follows the horror film legacy of classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Evil Dead that shocked several generations of fans. Toshio's spirit is often heard meowing throughout the film. Not only does this imply that his spirit merged with his deceased cat Mar, but it also relates to an old Japanese legend where the damned spirits of lost children become strays and as a result, produce a cat's meow. The house used in the film was not a constructed set but a real location, which had to be rented for film production. It became a tourist attraction following the film franchise's popularity. The house was demolished in 2019. The heroine of this terrifying thriller is Noriko Sakai playing a terror actress and aside from the ghosts, the only actor to return from the previous film is Yui Ichikawa as Chiharu. The main sources of the Japanese terror in the 2000s are the two installments of 'Ju-on', films shot on video about ghosts capable of freezing the blood with which Takashi Shimizu debuted. His great talent was discovered by Hiroshi Takahashi whose scripts in the nineties and especially that of Ringu (The Ring), generated a spectacular boom in horror cinema in Japan. Since then, the legions of followers of this phenomenon have multiplied around the world, especially thanks to the Internet and specialized festivals. Shimizu was personally commissioned to prepare the North American version, with production support from Sam Raimi and Robert Tappert.

The series is formed by ¨Ju-on (The Grudge)¨ (2002) by Takashi Shimuzu with Megumi Okina, Misaki Itô, Misa Uehara Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa. Followed by ¨Ju-on 2, (The Grudge 2)¨ (2003) by Takashi Shimuzu with Noriko Sakai, Kei Horie , Yui Ichikawa. Would be the last installment in the Ju-on series to be written and directed by Takashi Shimizu and going on the American remake ¨The Grudge¨ (2004) by Shimizu with Sarah Michellle Gellar, Jason Behr, KaDee Strickland, Grace Zabriske and Yuya Ozeki, Takako Fuji, and Takashi Matsuyama all appeared in The grudge (2002) and II (2003), the Japanese films upon which this film was based, all reprising their roles as the doomed Saeki family; unlike the other Japanese horror remakes like The Ring (2002), Dark Water (2005), Pulse (2006), and One missed call(2008), this was the only film out of all the others that actually remained in Japan instead of moving the story to America. And¨The Grudge 2¨ (2006) by director Shimizu himself with Amber Tamblyn, Arielle Kabel, Jennifer Beals, Sarah Michelle Gellar.

I was disappointed by the original but this sequel was much, much better. Everything about it has been improved - the plot, the character development, the direction, the mood, the fear factor. The over all feeling of this film is very very creepy. It's exactly how a ghost story should be. It doesn't give you the kind of scares that make you jump out of your skin like some movies do but what it does give you is a very uneasy and haunting feeling.

The arrangement and fragmentation of script was excellent. It's broken up into separate stories or chapters like the first one but they've played with the time line in this one in a very wonderful way which contributes to the ghostly feeling of the film as a whole. The story with the banging on the wall was a particular favourite of mine, and, I think, pretty genius.

I am so glad I watched this! It has now become one of my favourite Japanese horror films.