Written and directed by Takashi Shimizy
Trauma flows eternal and cares not what it touches in Takashi Shimizy’s Ju-On, where a curse falls upon a family and then ricochets straight at anyone who dares get involved even the slightest bit. Family, friends, colleagues, strangers: vengeful anger knows no limits and its effects are felt on a societal level even if we aren’t aware of it.
Megumi Okina is Rika, a social worker who’s made to do a welfare check on a couple and the husband’s elderly grandmother. She finds the house in disarray, the grandmother catatonic and the couple missing. She finds a boy trapped in a closet that’s been taped shut, but Rika will soon wish she kept that door closed.
So will a host of other people, as Rika’s colleagues, police detectives, ex-cops, and school girls all suffer the consequences of the demonic spirits whose anger targets all like wildfire, chaotic and all-consuming. Ju-On speaks of an evil that isn’t contained, but runs amok, motivated not by a personal connection, but simply existence itself.
The spirits of Ju-On know no bounds, and they’re relentless and unfathomable in their torment. Ju-On is the same, its horrors many, incessant, and surprising. Shimizy could have expanded upon his philosophical intent, but he’s honestly too busy trying to scare you out of your wits. There’s more terror packed in Ju-On than some entire franchises, making Shimizy all muscle, no fat, and he flexes a lot, not just with the frequency of his frights moments, but in the novelty of them too.
Ju-On’s a feat of dramatic pacing. You might think it’s not that hard to just floor it for 90 minutes, but then tell me which other movies, horror or otherwise, that manage it without numbing you to its twists and scares. It’s not a big club.
Horror movies can still be effective even if you sort of know what’s coming, the genre bag of tricks so well-known even a casual fan could tell you the most common ones, but Shimizy twists the familiar and conjures up new moves. Ju-On is a rare film that feels like a shot in the arm for an entire genre.
Ju-On introduces its many characters with title chapters bearing their names, and it almost makes the movie a series of short films bound together by a common theme that draws from the same poisoned well. It opens Ju-On up to a greater interpretation even if it limits itself to the damned misfortune of one person at a time.
In its chapters, Ju-On is a rushing bull you feel as it comes at you head-on, but as it stacks them into this cohesive whole, it attains a more visceral power. It’s subtle and gradual, but when it finally calls curtains, you feel like you just got a peek at something that’ll haunt your steps forever.
Mikkel Frederiksen 