Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)

 

Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)

 

This Japanese film is a true masterpiece of post-Millennial Horror cinema. It was clearly influenced by another Japanese film, the landmark “Ringo” (1998). Two share some imagery, notably scary, long, black hair, but that was a key image in Japanese Horror even before I was born. Far more importantly, both embrace the idea Supernatural Evil can take the form of something almost a public health emergency, that once the Monsters get loose even a little bit, they want to be an epidemic. Never-the-less, “Ju-On: The Grudge” is a unique film, defying more than a century of narrative assumptions as it gave us a feature-length film that had a strong conceit, but (close to) no plot.

 

It reminded me to a degree of Director William Castle’s whimsical Spookers – open a door and “BOO!” – except that Castle films, despite a few moments of real suspense, were often happy to be nothing more than theme-park rides, while here Writer/Director Takashi Shimizu, though seeming to take from the same tool-box, was more intent to scare us to death than making us giggle. As far as I know, no one died while watching “Ju-On ...” but not for Shimizu’s lack of trying.

 

It starts with the darkest of all Haunted House conceits. The Onryō is a creature of Japanese folklore, and most simply stated, is a Vengeful Ghost. Takashi expanded on this idea, seemingly drawing in some other culture’s traditions, wherein the deceased are absorbed into a larger Cosmic Identity, but their resentments are left behind, so Ghosts can only be bad as they are made up of the rotten leftovers of departed Humans; if all a person’s good is gone, and only the resentments remain, Spirits must be suppressed quickly after death or the consequences could be catastrophic.

 

This started as two short films (1998 and 2000 respectively) followed by two longer straight-to-video movies (both 2000). I’ve seen none of these. This version was the first to be theatrically released, and I get the impression the narrow, but compelling, idea had been honed to perfection with each subsequent variation, the Director confident that each new one would be seen by a largely new audience, and therefore not come off as redundant.

 

(Note on the Franchise: Shimizu has essentially made the same film seven times, five mentioned above, a sequel to this film (2003), and an American remake (2004). Both the Japanese and the American versions continued as independent franchises with a combined fourteen installments, one being a cross-over with the “Ringu” series, as well as at least one more projected film, but Shimizu’s role in was not as central in anything after 2004.)

 

There is an ambiguous prologue, the only scene in the film with any blood (mere droplets) that represented an important backstory that is not explained till much later; I will spill all those beans now:

 

Takeo Saeki (Takashi Matsuyama) was an abusive husband who murdered his wife Kayako (Takako Fuji) after discovering she is in love with another man. He also kills his son Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) and the family cat. As the dead don’t let go of their grudges, and Kayako and Toshio become demonic beings, they haunt, and ultimately either kill Takeo or drive him to suicide.

 

After that, all three Humans, plus the cat, are Onryō, unleashing all their rage upon the living, starting with those with some connection to the house that they lived in, then moving to those connected to their victims, and ever-expanding circle of Haunting and Death.

 

The film proceeds in quickly sketched episodes, introducing the next Victim, establishing the context of the victim’s life deftly enough that the Characters are wholly believable but don’t require the real-estate usually devoted to conventional Characterization, then it introduces the Stalking from the Ghosts, and finally the Victim’s horrible fate. Each episode gives you an inter-card identifying the next person about to die, and not all of the episodes follow strict chronological order. Critic Kim Newman perceptively compared this to “La Ronde” (stage play 1897, filmed repeated thereafter) with its extreme both in its elliptical structure and its cynicism regarding emptiness of human aspirations and self-delusions. “La Ronde” cast a cold eye on Romantic Love, while “Ju-On …” has an even more jaded view of our presumption that we can Control our Fates. It may be the first Horror film to employ this inventive narrative structure.

 

Critic Marc Savlov praised the fact that the film “has no real traditional three-act structure to speak of … Fear itself has no structure, and ‘Ju-on’ plays to that primal, reptilian part of the mind that sees the shadow on the wall and transmogrifies it into something else … Americans see blood and violence and noise and react viscerally. Shimizu sees darkened staircases and hears the rustle of dead autumn leaves and reacts as if from the devil’s own haiku.”

 

Critic Rich Dishman wrote, “The absence of these reliable genre components has a liberating effect. Shimizu's goal is to draw us into his movie by delivering one thing -- an atmosphere of anticipatory dread that is as implacable as Kayako's curse. And for the entire 92 minutes of the film he does just that. Anything that distracts from this purpose does not make the cut.”

 

The closest thing to a Central Character we get is Rika Nishina (Megumi Okina), a Social Worker who appears on screen less than one minute after the prologue is completed. She’s an inexperienced but assigned a difficult case because the prior Social Worker simply stopped coming to work (in other words, he disappeared). Her Client is an elderly woman with dementia who has seemingly been abandoned by her family (in other words, they disappeared). The old woman just happens to live in the same where the Saeki family tragedy unfolded five years earlier.

 

Making the abandonment of an old woman the film’s first major set-up is important; the responsibility of children to parents is one of the pillars of all the world’s cultures, but as the Japanese also embrace ancestor worship, making the obvious even more explicit. This is a film is un-explicit in its violence, but very explicit in the roles everyone fulfills in the society of the living, it is one of the things that make the very economical Characterization so believable and compelling.

 

When Rika goes to check on the mostly bed ridden-woman, she also finds the Toshio’s ghost sitting in an upstairs closet. She doesn’t initially realize she’ll dealing with the Dead, but the terrifying perversities quickly escalate, and poor Rika realizes there’s no escape essentially at the same moment that she realizes she’s face-to-face with the unworldly.

 

In terms of the audience’s experience (but not in terms of actual chronological sequence) this kicks off a chain-of-events that leads the Dead, in a permanent state of rage, to prey upon the Living, traveling far beyond the house to spread the curse.  Each progressive Victim has some tie to either the house or a previous Victim, but as the film progresses, the connections become increasingly tenuous. It is made clear that there is no such thing as a safe-haven in this movie. Shimizu also makes the audience do some work; narrative coherence requires our engaged observation as the real sequence of events can only be deciphered by being aware of a repeated line of dialogue or prop.

 

Like Character Rika, almost none of the Victims have any clue why they have been targeted, so they are given no opportunity to fight back. The one that tries, Police Detective Izumi Toyama (Misa Uehara), who investigated the original Murder case, does not come out of this any better than anyone else. Almost completely devoid of violence, the film instead gives the Victims a final moment of paralyzing hysteria as they come face to face with the uncanny, another apparent borrowing from “Ringu.” The Ghosts seem to have an insatiable need for company in Hell, and it eventually becomes apparent that at least some of their Victims are joining them in the Grudge against all the living, no matter how Innocent they may have been in life.

 

The Production Design (Toshiharu Tokiwa) keeps the details spare, but telling. The films colors are muted; costumes and sets are mostly beige.  The rhythm is deliberately slow, punctuated at carefully selected, but increasingly frequent, shock scenes that show far more discretion than most of the rest of Horror cinema. My favorites are a shower scene that is far more inventive than most Hitchcock Homages and a recreation of Henry Fuseli’s famous painting “The Nightmare” (1781).

 

Then there is the Sound Design, which is deeply creepy. The meowing of a cat has never been more nightmare inducing, especially when it comes out of an apparently Human mouth. Even that pales before the ungodly noise uttered from the mouth of the ghost Kayako. (the film had a Sound Team, but Shimizu takes personal credit for the Kayako Sound Effect)

 

There are two very striking things in the best Japanese and other Asian Horror films that emerged just after “Ringu” (these are often referred to collectively as “Jap-Horror” even though several different countries are at play here). One is how casually the Supernatural is accepted as real, they don’t play on the tension between the Rational and the Supernatural, but treat the Supernatural as a Natural Crisis. Jap-Horror often requires a Supernatural Professional, but unlike western literature’s Professor Van Helsing (Character in Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” (1897)), there’s no laborious struggle to convince the bourgeoisie of the Reality of ancient Evils, the Japanese bourgeoisie act as if they are comfortable with the existence of an Alternate Reality overlapping their own. In the movie “The Eye” (2002, and Hong-Kong-Singaporean, not Japanese) the Exorcist Character is never challenged as a Charlatan, the family seems to have looked up his name in a phone book. This is ironic, because decades of surveys have provided evidence that the Real-World Japanese among the World most Atheistic population, and therefore less open to personal, Supernatural beliefs, than the majority of the USA.

 

The other thing really striking to me is how Apocalyptic these films are. Most of the best start with a personally Intimate Haunting/Horror, but by the end the threat has expanded beyond a small circle of friends, and there is a sense that the Whole World is at risk (“Ringu” (1998), “The Eye,” and “The Pulse”(2006)). USA Horror either starts and ends Intimate (“The Exorcist” (1973)) or starts and ends Apocalyptic (“The Night of the Living Dead” (1968)). Would a be going too far out on the limb to suggest that the significantly Atheistic Japanese look to old Folklore to deal with the Psychological Impact of massive disasters of living history (earthquakes, tsunamis, Hiroshima, Nagasaki), while in the more religious USA, less battered by such huge disasters, look to old Folklore to address purely Domestic issues?

 

The film’s ending struck me most. There’s no real Climax or dramatic resolution, we’re just abruptly thrown into a wordless epilogue which is nothing but a string of desolate street scenes, one after another, no life and activity except for trash blown by the wind. As the images accumulate, the meaning becomes obvious: The Grudge has fallen upon, and devastated, the whole of the city.

 

Of the franchise, I’ve seen only this film and the USA remark. The remake is not awful, but fails to deliver anymore of the typical, because it evaded this film’s unique structure (though directed by Shimizu, this version was scripted by Stephen Susco). Notably, the epilogue that so impressed me isn’t even attempted.

 

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYyPTyXlT9w