Lessons From The Grudge 6 years later

[Sakunyuusha]

1. The only people who still haven't seen this are me and a bunch of guys in Saudi Arabia and South America. We've got two Brazilians, a Colombian, and Chilean on board this torrent! It's a Latin partay!

2. OMFG Misaki Ito was in this film!? XD The Asahi Beer girl! XD Of Densha Otoko (TV version) fame! The girl who single-handedly roped me in to watching Edison no Haha and KikenNa Aneki! (Neither of which were particularly good shows, mind you. Decent, but a big waste of time, admittedly.)

3. Wow, so this is where Tecmo gets all their ideas for Fatal Frame games from. Now I'm not nearly as impressed with their character design as I was before. I recognize over half of the ghosts in the trailer from Fatal Frame 3! LOL The crawling woman? The mother/child pair? (It's a daughter in the game, but looks like a boy in the movie.) I saw a scene where a human stuck his/her arms out through a barred window and it totally screamed "Tachibana Itsuki locked up in the village jail cell in Fatal Frame 2" to me. Damn. If I see a ghost with a broken neck, a ghost with no eyes, a geisha-esque ghost, or a pair of twin ghosts, I'm going to give Tecmo a mean look. And it'll matter. Somehow. Just you watch.

4. Arabs and South Americans don't seed very well. :\ I've got 5 seeds and 5 peers connected to me (out of 7 seeds total and 13 peers total) and my DL speed is a paltry 43 kbps. :| And most of that 43 kbps is coming from two Americans. lol

5. I'm beginning to get the impression that the scary movies which fans of the genre label as being "the very best" are only scary to people who want to be scared. Judging from the trailer, most of this film's fear factor isn't about jumping you but is about just being creepy. Like ... they don't scare you with the hand in the shower. You see it. You see a hand, in her hair, while she's taking a shower. What's supposed to be scary is how she begins to feel its fingers, and trace them back up along the wrist, and then she turns around and there's nothing. But ... that's not scary.

Or like, there was a scene with somebody on top of Misaki Ito while she was inside of a futon. How is that scary? It would be scary in real life if I went to bed and suddenly I felt a ghost's body on top of mine. But when you're watching a movie? It's just weird, nothing more. Makes you go, "Huh. That was strange," and then you don't think about it ever again. Not scary.

6. You can only go so far with a thread like this one before you have to watch the actual movie. Too bad it's got several more hours to go.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Well, I just finished it. It was entertaining, but moreso as a mystery story than anything else. It was especially interesting to see the father (who saw his daughter in the future) and the daughter (who saw her dad in the past) stories. Were the ghosts creepy? Yes. Did I jump? More than 5, less than 10 times, yes. Was I scared? No. Can I go to bed easy? Now that I've confirmed for myself what I thought I was seeing at the end, yes, yes I can.

[hide]That the director was implying that the murdered house wife looked identical to / "was" Rika.[/hide]

 

[reingiolt]

lol i didn't even know they've made 3-5. i love watching horror flicks (not the american ones since they're mostly just a gore fest ) but unfortunately i don't really know about the latest ones so i can't even search for them.

 

[EzikialRage]

I saw Ju-on:the Grudge and the American version of the Grudge I thought both were pretty good. Although my only gripe is why make an American version of a slightly new Japanese movie if it basically has the same characters, happens in the same country and even has what appears to be an identical house,Hell I am surprised they didn't use the same diary.There are a few differences between the two.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

My sister said the American one was hella scary. She was brave enough to watch the Japanese one with me when I took my ExtHDD home last week, and she sat through the entire thing and was just like me -- she got jumped at the jumpy parts (like unexpected or loud noises), but she did not feel that the movie was what you'd call "scary." She told me repeatedly that the American version is "way scarier" because of the changes to the character design of Kayako (the "grudge lady") and the introduction of some scenes which were not featured in the Japanese Grudge.

She agreed that the ending to the Japanese one was intriguing and was not brought over to America because of cultural differences in our (USA vs. Japan) interpretation of what a ghost's personality ought to be like. (The Japanese place much greater emphasis on the nature of the death, i.e. a person who was good in life can become an evil onryou if they died a horrible death; Americans tend to take the Casper approach, believing that a ghost's personality is 99.9% identical to their personality in life, and that the only reason they're still here is that they have unfinished business.)

I dunno. I'm not going to pirate the American version and I'm not going to keep the Japanese one I downloaded either. (I have almost never, ever, ever in all my life downloaded movies. This is literally either the fourth or the fifth ever.) I watched the Japanese one twice (once on my own, once with my sister), and I don't think I care to watch it a third time -- even if it is done with a different set of actors and adds some new scenes.

 

[EzikialRage]

I dunno. I'm not going to pirate the American version and I'm not going to keep the Japanese one I downloaded either. (I have almost never, ever, ever in all my life downloaded movies. This is literally either the fourth or the fifth ever.) I watched the Japanese one twice (once on my own, once with my sister), and I don't think I care to watch it a third time -- even if it is done with a different set of actors and adds some new scenes.

You would be basically watching it the 3rd time.Although I did like how the American version ended and plays a little into the 2nd movie. Whats funny is Takako Fuji even plays Kayako in the first two American versions of The Grudge and Toshio is played by Yuya Ozeki in the first American version of the Grudge.

 

[EzikialRage]

lol i didn't even know they've made 3-5. i love watching horror flicks (not the american ones since they're mostly just a gore fest ) but unfortunately i don't really know about the latest ones so i can't even search for them.

Japanese

Katasumi (1998 short film)
4444444444(1998 short film)
Ju-on 2000
Ju-on 2 2000
Ju-on: The Grudge 2003
Ju-on: The Grudge 2 2003
JU-ON: KUROI SHOJO (”The Grudge: Girl in Black”) 2009
JU-ON: SHIROI ROJO (”The Grudge: Old Lady in White”) 2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ju-on
http://www.scifijapan.com/articles/2009/05/06/new-sequels-for-ju-onthe-grudge/

American

The Grudge 2004
The Grudge 2 2006
The Grudge 3 2009

 

[cattz]

To be honest all of the ju-on's where miserable to me. You could see every single last scare coming from miles away and they repeated everything to death.

Not to forget some cheesy as hell acting. I kept thinking back to the "They're eating her..." clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv43e5MtvpM&feature=related
it was so ridiculous..

They really require you to be scared by the "boo!" or "startling "type of scares I guess. Maybe if you where scared of mimes with their white makeup? Who knows..

Just where a giant disappointment on the whole. Take away the hype and expectations, it was still quite miserable to me.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I don't think "miserable" is the correct word, but I know what you are trying to say. (It doesn't make sense to call a film "miserable." Films can make people feel miserable, but films cannot themselves be miserable.)

I didn't think the acting in the film I saw was too wooden. I thought the girl who played Rika did a believable job of playing a girl-next-door character type, and I thought Misaki Itoh overacted as a 超可愛い sister character -- but that's who she is, that's what she does for a living, is take the mundane and make it super-cute, so yeah, I loved her here too ^-^ -- and the others didn't stand out to me as being too bad.

If the actors' delivery in the first Ju-on film can be called wooden, I think it's because the script was what was wooden!

 

[cattz]

I don't think "miserable" is the correct word, but I know what you are trying to say. (It doesn't make sense to call a film "miserable." Films can make people feel miserable, but films cannot themselves be miserable.)

Miserable
2. a: wretchedly inadequate or meager <a miserable hovel> b : causing extreme discomfort or unhappiness <a miserable situation>

Inadequate? Watch the first two movies. Isn't much more to say about that.
Causes extreme discomfort/unhappiness? Nice way of saying "Could barely stand to sit through them.."


Anyways, I still remember Yuki's one from the first movie. If only because it showcases everything I said before, heh. Some of the worst acting you will ever see and just beyond ridiculous..

It's all preference and tastes anyways. Doesn't matter much either way.