Ju-On: The Grudge premiered at the Screamfest Film Festival on 18 October 2002, by Lions Gate Films. The film received favourable reviews from critics, but was initially unfavourably compared to another Japanese horror film, Ring. Subsequent reception has been more positive, with both Ju-On and Ring being considered two of the greatest horror films ever made. It spawned a franchise, an American remake, 2006 and 2009 sequels and a 2020 sidequel to the remake, and a prequel television series entitled JU-ON: Origins which premiered in 2020.
Plot
Below, the events of the film are in chronological order; however, the original film is presented in a nonlinear narrative.
Several years prior to the main plot, Takeo Saeki murders his wife Kayako after discovering she is in love with another man, also killing the family cat, Mar, and his son, Toshio. The murders create a curse that revives the family as vengeful ghosts, with Kayako's ghost murdering Takeo. Whoever enters their house in Nerima, Tokyo, is eventually consumed by the curse, which spreads to the place they die in and in turn consumes anyone who comes in.
The latest owners of the house are the Tokunaga family, consisting of salaryman Katsuya, his wife Kazumi, and his ill mother Sachie. Kazumi is quickly consumed by the curse, and Katsuya is emotionally affected by Takeo's personality before dying too. Katsuya's sister Hitomi dies shortly after Kayako's spirit follows her to her office and then her apartment.
Social worker Rika is sent by her boss Hirohashi to care for Sachie. She discovers Toshio and witnesses Sachie being killed by Kayako's ghost, causing her to faint. Hirohashi finds Rika and contacts the police. Detectives Nakagawa and Igarashi discover Katsuya's and Kazumi's bodies in the attic and later learn of Hitomi's disappearance and the death of a security guard at her workplace. Hirohashi's body is discovered, and Rika is haunted by the ghosts.
Upon researching the history of the house and the Saeki murders, Nakagawa and Igarashi contact a retired detective named Toyama, who is afraid of revisiting the case. Toyama goes to burn the house down but hears a group of teenage girls upstairs. One flees while the others are consumed. Kayako appears, chasing Toyama away but killing Nakagawa and Igarashi. Toyama eventually dies, leaving behind a daughter named Izumi. As a teenager, Izumi went to the house with her friends but fled while her friends were killed by Kayako; this was the event Toyama witnessed in the past.
Izumi is wrought with guilt for abandoning her friends and becomes increasingly paranoid and unstable. Two of her other friends visit her and discover Izumi and her dead friends have their eyes blackened out in photos. Izumi encounters a vision of her dead father and then discovers the ghosts of her friends watching her. She is cornered by her dead friends, only for Kayako to appear and drag her into damnation.
Some time later after visiting the house, Rika has moved on with her life. Her friend Mariko, an elementary school teacher, pays a visit to Toshio, who is registered as her student but has never shown up for class. Rika races to save her but is too late. Kayako's ghost comes after her, and Rika witnesses Kayako briefly take on her appearance. She realizes that she is doomed to play out the curse and the same fate as Kayako. With Toshio watching from the banisters, Takeo’s ghost descends the stairs and kills her.
In the deserted Tokyo streets, many missing persons' posters lie on the ground. Rika's corpse, now with a much longer hairstyle similar to Kayako's, lies in the house's attic, only to reawaken with a death rattle.
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Ju-On: The Grudge was filmed entirely in Tokyo.[4] Some critics have identified loose connections between the story in the film and the traditional Japanese folktale Yotsuya Kaidan.[5]
In 2004, Sony Pictures Entertainment released an American remake of the film. The film was directed by Takashi Shimizu and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jason Behr. The main plot of the film follows Rika's experience within the house but with a different ending. Its sequel, The Grudge 2, however, mirrors a similar ending where Aubrey Davis meets the same fate as Rika.[citation needed]
Ju-On was given a limited theatrical release by Solar Films in the Philippines on 26 November 2003.[7] The film received a limited theatrical release in the United States on 23 July 2004.[8]
In the United States, the film grossed a total of $325,680 from 23 July – 9 December 2004.[9]Ju-on: The Grudge was released on DVD by Lions Gate on 9 November. The disc contains an audio commentary with Sam Raimi and Scott Spiegel and interviews with the cast and crew.[10]
A sequel to the film titled Ju-on: The Grudge 2 also directed by Shimizu was released in 2003.[11]
Reception
The film received critical acclaim upon release, receiving a fresh 80% on Rotten Tomatoes.[12] At Metacritic, a website which assigns a rating out of 100 for reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 48, based on 22 reviews indicating "mixed or average reviews".[13]The Washington Post gave the film a mixed reviewing, stating that it "isn't particularly scary. No, it's much harder on you than mere fright: It's... creepy" and "it lacks any interest in conventional narrative and doesn't bother with hero or heroine, or with any sense of coherency, of any mechanism of solution of its mystery".[14]David Kehr of The New York Times compared the film unfavourably to The Ring (1998), opining that Ju-on: The Grudge "turns into a rote series of killings, with each new sequence introduced by a title with the name of its primary victim. Because there is a new hero to identify with every 10 minutes, the viewer isn't drawn into a sustained suspense, but is merely subjected to a series of more or less foreseeable shocks".[15]Kim Newman gave the film three stars out of five in Empire, noting that "as a film, it is at once too much a part of an overarching story and divided into too many episodes to be all of a piece. However, as a sustained collection of scare moments, it's a winner".[16] Derek Elley compared the film unfavourably to both The Ring and Dark Water, writing that "in the end, The Grudge comes down to little more than when and where the ghostly little boy will next appear, and the final explanation is so-what".[1]
The film's reception has changed to become more positive over time, with many fans and critics now frequently listing it as one of the greatest Japanese horror films ever made. [17][18]
