31 Days of Asian Horror: Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) vs The Grudge (2004)

It’s a Grudge kind of week, and after talking about the Netflix series back on Monday, it seemed only fitting to talk about the movie and its US remake for today’s pairing. It’s also the 19th birthday of Ju-On: The Grudge, as it premiered on October 18th at the Screamfest Film Festival, and the US remake’s 17th birthday is on the 22nd making it even more fitting that I celebrate with two posts about the franchise this week. It’s almost like a pre-planned this or something :)

Though the movies share some similarities, there were some differences and found that for some of the things I liked, the other movie didn’t quite live up to and vice versa. Since the series is fairly well known I figured for this review I would break it up into sections and comment on those specific points more than just an overall review. Note, there is a 2020 remake of the movie, but I haven’t watched it nor am I going to tie it or any of the other sequels and remakes into this post. The Grudge series is pretty extensive (it doesn’t even start with Ju-On: The Grudge), but I am only focusing on Ju-On: The Grudge vs the first US remake, The Grudge.

The two movies do share quite a bit in characteristics, but I do find that there are some noticeable differences in the two that really effected my general enjoyment. One being the setup of the curse. The US remake made the decision to set the film in Japan, but the curse happens almost exclusively on English-speakers which inherently forces the plot to not be able to take the turns that the original did. With the original we got to see the grudge as essentially the main character of the movie. It was what tied the stories and characters together. While the US remake sort of does this, it falls flat in the expansiveness of the curse. Because it’s limited to just picking English speakers, or that we’re really only hearing from them, the curse seems like it hasn’t been around for as long as it has and the permeation of the curse isn’t as effective. We also miss out on a lot of the way the original ties in the characters, purely on the fact that if you see a white person, you know it’s part of it and reveals end up falling flat.

The original is set up almost like anthology of sorts, and spans a bit more time. While I don’t think it does the best job working them in as cohesively as they should, it does have a better grasp at connecting people and showing what the curse is and how it operates. One of the main storylines that is cut out of the US remake that I really enjoy is the daughter of the detective, Izumi (Misa Uehara), who was the only one left alive after her father tried to set fire to the house while she and her friends were there. Her friends and her father died, leaving her to grieve and feel remorseful as the only living person, and the scenes we see of her add a new level to the curse that we don’t really get to see as well from the remake. There’s also a bit more emphasis on how it effects the survivors and how when the entity isn’t directly killing, it’s still doing harm. Taking this plot out of the movie effectively made Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) the main character of the movies when in the original Rika (Megumi Okina) is almost there for the purpose to bookend the movie and be the character that ties it all together, allowing the other characters a bit more emphasis and solidifying the grudge and house being the true main characters.

I do find that besides the breakdown of Izumi, most of the original isn’t quite as scary. The US remake works in the entity a bit more creepier, and the effects of the black blob work better as well as making some of the scares a little more quieter and mysterious. As I stated above, I had some issues with the cohesion of the acts in the original, and felt that the remake worked some of them in a bit better, establishing what was in the past more definitively than the original. I also felt the opening scene in the remake set the tone for the movie a bit more and generally liked how it worked into the story, as well as Gellar’s acting being a lot more convincing than Okinas. Whether it was a problem with sound effects being added in post production so she couldn’t sync up or her skill, a lot of the first time you see her on screen she never convinces you that things are scary. She doesn’t react to some noises and does others, and it took a bit more time for the tone of the movie to really settle in.

I feel like if you’ve been with me on this daily journey, you’ll already know what I’m going to comment on next, as I’ve said it in the prior two pairings I’ve done - the insistence of there being a happy ending plagues this one just like all the other remakes. I get it, it’s open purposefully to hopefully get more money with sequels but it’s exhausting and tiring. We’ve already seen multiple people die, I don’t expect this to end happily. And it shouldn’t. It’s a cop out that in turn sabotages all that you’ve set up with the grudge. The ending of the original just makes more sense, and I liked the way they accomplished it through a time jump where the character was caught off guard and had been removed from the events for a while was much more effective solidifying the permeation of the grudge and that you are never truly out of its grasp.

Ju-On: The Grudge can be found on a number of places to rent and streaming on Amazon Prime, and The Grudge is currently streaming on Pluto TV (it just was taken off of Prime last month).

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Ju-On Origins (2020)

If you’ve seen the original Ju-On, or even the US remake, you’ll know the basic story of Ju-On and the idea that when an incident happens in a place that is so tragic or horrible, it’ll stay with it forever haunting anyone who encounters it. While the original does focus a good bit of the story on the house itself, the Netflix original series Ju-On: Origins places it in a new light.

The series heavily focuses on the house, and the way it is presented is from a paranormal researcher’s quest to find out about all that happened there, interviewing other people’s accounts, and in turn, uncovers the horrific stories that happened. The drama series is much more darker than its original, really honing in on the idea of the grudge and what type of evil creates it. The series gives the distinction a little more weight, in that the grudge happens when the worst of the worst tragedy and events unfold and that it’s abnormal making the house so much more special.

I enjoyed the series the first time I watched it when it premiered back in July of last year, and still enjoyed it after a second watch. I always found that the original movie’s downfall was that it tried to separate the movie into each individual story and didn’t work to make it cohesive enough like it was trying to be more of an anthology, which I feel the series worked well within. Some of the stories are ongoing throughout the episodes, but because it’s broken into individual episodes, it allows for the jumps to previous incidents in time to flow better within the plot.

Placing the series in more of a documentary style or a faux-true story viewpoint was interesting and I think worked in that sense to keep up the scares when normal jump scares were not used as much, as it focused the horrors onto terrible humans doing terrible things and almost drawn to the house’s evil to carry out their acts. It still has the same flare that the movies do, though, and nods to the original with the use of the closet being a central place and a child's horrific death the catalyst for the grudge. The episodes are fairly short (under and half an hour) so it’s a quick easy binge.

If you are a fan of the series of movies, I do think you’d get something out of the series as it does kind of tie up loose ends regarding the grudge and its specificity of it being at that house thus showcasing how terrible the house is, but it does take the levels of the stories to a whole new extreme that is far enough removed from the original that I could see there being a divide in its reception. They are much more graphic and violent, the focus being on the worst of humanity which can be sometimes hard to stomach. I didn’t find that the series had many scares of a normal horror film, but more of a general sense of uneasiness the entire time that escalates as the series progresses and the stories get much more tragic.

Ju-On: Origins can be found streaming on Netflix.

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