(at around 34 mins) Faith Matheson at one point plays peekaboo with Melinda's unseen ghost, an intentional homage to Saito, a man with dementia who played peekaboo with Toshio in Ju-on: The Grudge (2002).
The original plan was to reboot the series completely, featuring a new storyline that abandons the Saeki family. However, it was confirmed in an interview with Nicolas Pesce that the film takes place during the events of The Grudge (2004) and The Grudge 2 (2006).
The house's number in the film is 44, a reference to the original Ju-on short film 4444444444 (1998). 4 is also a number of bad luck in Japanese culture due to the number in Japanese specifically being a homophone for the character Shi, which means death.
This was the first American Grudge film not to have any involvement with Takashi Shimizu, who directed the original 4 Ju-on films and the two American remakes. Although he did not direct The Grudge 3 (2009) he did remain as a producer.
Final film of Stefanie Sherk. She died on April 2019 of suicide. She was married to Demián Bichir, her co-star.