I didn’t really mean for this year’s 31 Days of Horror to become a Ju-On festival, but here we are. Each year I try and work my way through at least one horror franchise. There is something fun, I think, about watching every single movie in a series, even when they get rather ridiculous towards the end.
But again, I didn’t really plan on Ju-On being the franchise I watched this year. Admittedly, I’m only three films into what is really a rather extended franchise so I may not make it all the way through, especially since I’m already growing tired of it. But three films is more than I had planned so we’ll see how it goes.
Because Americans can’t read subtitles popular foreign language films are often remade by American studios. This was very much the case with the J-Horror craze of the early 2000s. Numerous Japanese films got American remakes. Some of them were actually pretty good.
Some of them weren’t. As is the case with The Grudge. Directed by Takashi Shimizu, who created the entire Ju-On series and directed quite a few of them, The Grudge sticks pretty close to the plot of Ju-On: The Grudge, but with a lot of Americanizations.
Almost all of the main characters are American and they all speak English. The plot retains the same sort-of disjointed chronology, but here it is easier to follow. It helps that they’ve given one character more of a through-line allowing us to follow her through the film’s timeline.
Most of the big horror sequences are the same in both films, though I’d give the scary edge to the Japanese versions (though that may be because I watched it first.) The American remake has a much bigger, more bombastic finale. The American version is much slicker as well.
I wonder what my feelings on this one would be if I’d never seen the Japanese original before, or if I’d seen it after I’d watched this one. With this type of thing, there is always a feeling that the first one you watched is better, kind of like how the first version of a song you hear is always the best.
Sarah Michelle Gellar plays Karen Davis an American foreign exchange student. She volunteers for a care center and she becomes tasked with visiting an elderly woman who needs regular care because the normal caretaker has not shown up to work.
She’s basically the same character from the first film who is tasked with the same job. Like in the original, she finds the old lady nearly comatose and the house a mess. Ditto the closet with the tape all around it and inside a cat and then a creepy boy.
The film sticks with her more, giving us that through line. We get flashbacks to the parents of that old lady (William Mapother and Clea Duvall) and to the original murdered family (featuring a brief performance by Bill Pullman).
If you’ve seen the original there isn’t much need to watch this one. But if you haven’t seen it then I suppose this is a perfectly good watch. Like I say it is hard for me to judge which one is “better” because they are so similar, but I’m gonna give the edge to the Japanese version. It feels much creepier and scary to me.
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