Double Feature: Ju-on: The Grudge & The Grudge
If you’ve been paying any attention to horror cinema over the last twenty-five years, you should be at least tangentially familiar with the now iconic pale face of Japanese dread. You know the one: long black stringy hair that hides an impossibly white face, wide-open sunken eyes on a face that screams a mixture of terror, pain, and anger.
This unnerving imagery has a thousand-year history in the artwork and folklore of Japan but it took until the 1960s for it to make its way into the island nation’s cinematic language. Films like Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba and Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan would begin to set the stage for the emerging genre, but it wasn’t until the late ’90s, with, most notably, Hideo Nakata’s Ringu that the vengeful Onryō (wrathful spirits) would become the true face of Japanese horror.
After Ringu was successfully remade for American audiences in 2002 as The Ring, mainstream Western audiences finally got a glimpse of the pale visage that had been terrorizing Japanese historians and fans for generations. But, perhaps even more so than this pair of international genre hits, it would be Takashi Shimizu’s 2002 ghost story Ju-on: The Grudge that would truly solidify the look and feel of what was quickly becoming known worldwide as “J-horror.”
Set in suburban Japan, Ju-on: The Grudge tells the story of a multiple murder so vicious that its victims have forged their own unyielding cycle of violence and revenge. By mixing elements of traditional ghost stories with modern non-linear presentation – not to mention a healthy dose of imagery lifted from Henry Fuseli’s grisly 1781 painting “The Nightmare” – Shimizu paints a picture of despair so profound and unsettling it’s no wonder it became the poster child for an entire genre. And while it may betray its own logic from time to time, Ju-on: The Grudge is nevertheless top tier horror cinema that will not disappoint fans of methodical psychological creeps and well-timed, visually impactful jump scares.
And then there’s the 2004 American remake.
Where The Ring managed to hang on to and perhaps even enhance (or, successfully augment for Western audiences, I should say) many of the elements that made Ringu so successful, The Grudge fails miserably. What’s so remarkable about this is that the director of this unflattering remake is none other than Takashi Shimizu, the writer and creator of the original film. Somehow, The Grudge, a nearly shot-for-shot recreation of Ju-on, is completely inert and toothless.
This may be due to Shimizu’s inexplicable insistence that the story should remain in Japan while all the actors should be American, or the foolish notion that Sarah Michelle Gellar – of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame – was a strong enough talent to lead it. Either way, where Ju-on sets a new standard for modern horror, The Grudge tramples all over its legacy with such blatant disregard that I wish some angry spirits would rise up and erase it from existence.
Ju-On: The Grudge (2002). Directed by Takashi Shimizu. 4/5 stars.
The Grudge (2004). Directed by Takashi Shimizu. 1.5/5 stars.
