Ju-on

So I saw The Grudge last night. I can't say it was an awful film, but I would hardly encourage anyone to go see it. I realize I'm probably being silly by asking for plot in a horror movie, but at minimum, I think they're better when (at least in hindsight) the killer has some sort of motive. As a favorite writer of mine once put it, even a ghost needs a MO. What follows is spoilers, so don't read if you plan to see the movie itself.

The film opens by quoting a Japanese belief that, when a person dies in the grip of strong emotion, the place where they died will sometimes become cursed. Thereafter, death will haunt that place, and leave a stain upon any who visit. Their word for this is onryou, vengeful spirit, and this belief forms the basis of nearly all Japanese horror films.

In the film, the curse hangs about a house where a family was murdered three years ago. The husband discovered that his wife was obsessed with another man; in a fit of rage, he strangled her, drowned her in the bathtub, and stuffed her body in the attic. Their son... well, we never quite find out, but apparently he was killed too, along with his pet cat. And afterwards, the father hung himself. Anyone who so much as sets foot in the house is doomed to die, soon, and violently, at the hands of the spirits that inhabit it, no matter where they go.

All of this makes for a very nice setup, but then the whole thing goes to hell. It's the wife's spirit who kills; we never see the husband, even though he is the source of the emotion and therefore, according to the prologue, the source of the curse. Sometimes she kills in similar manners or places to the original crime; sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes the son shows up as a warning to victims that his mother is coming; sometimes he doesn't. Some people are attacked almost immediately upon entering the house for the first time; others live there peacefully for weeks. Sometimes the spirit kills several people at once; other times certain people are allowed to live. It's all totally arbitrary.

And of course, there's our heroine, who alone manages to have a chat with the son's ghost without any attack. Later, she gets a full-body flashback of the original tragedy, which is useful for exposition, but why would the spirits bother? Particularly in light of the fact that they kill her almost immediately afterwards. Compare the ending of the highly superior Ring, where the heroine discovers the perfectly logical reason that she alone was spared. It's probably the most chilling moment in the film. By the end of that film, at least, I felt like I understood why things were going on. But not so here.

If you just like being scared, though, by all means go. There are a dozen victims in a 100 minute film; that's a death every 8.3 minutes. Unlike some horror films that work up to a few major scares, this one keeps them coming almost nonstop. If you're not totally immune, you should be pretty well drained of adrenaline by the end. So if that's all your looking for, you'll at least be startled.