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| Ju-On - The Grudge [2003] | ![Ju-On - The Grudge [2003]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41WGVEV2KQL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Takashi Shimizu
Actors: Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa
Studio: Contender Entertainment Group
Category: DVD
List Price: £9.99
Buy Used: £1.25
You Save: £8.74 (87%)
New (16) from £1.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 6360
Format: Anamorphic, Dubbed, Pal
Languages: English (Subtitled), Japanese (Original Language), English (Dubbed)
Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Running Time: 92 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5030305510596
ASIN: B0002VF4QC
Theatrical Release Date: 2003
Release Date: October 22, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 Scared me November 20, 2008
For years i have beeing looking for movie to scare me and nothing did untill i saw Ju-on: The Grudge I knew it was scary , i didn't think it would have scared me so much as it did.
After watching Ju-on: The Grudge, I was pleased with how it ended but overall I was scared out of my mind. Never again will I watch a Japanese horror movie alone.
This film was both creative and fascinating. It was a great look in Japanese folklore. Comparing this movie to the American version, this one was more scarier and was done better. The American version was more into the effects and the shock factor. This original focused more on the scare factor, the kind that lasts more than a second.
With the intertwining of stories and how they overlap makes it s movie you have to think about. The end result left me satisfied yet wanting to know more. I wanted to see more scares and more chills. There was a lot of explaining to do and since I don't speak Japanese, I had to read a lot.
Although I found a lot of similarities to The Ring and Ringu, with the long hair of the girl draped over her face and the house being cursed like the video, there are a lot of good qualities that make this movie enjoyable to the horror movie fan.
WOAH August 27, 2008
I bought this by mistake - instead of the slightly better known American version. I have watched hundreds of horror films, which compared to this, are mediocre at best. My friends are supposedly 'hard to scare' and have not been at all affected by the more modern horrors, to this film however, were screaming and hiding behind cushions. They needed to have a 'buddy' to go into the kitchen to get a drink, and to this day I believe they have not ventured up the stairs...
Though the story jumps around and can be very confusing, this has to be one of the scariest films ever made. Particularly the boys mother crawling down the stairs - I have never been so freaked out in my entire life, and as my sitting room is at the bottom of the stairs...!
The plot is confusing and I still dont understand some of it, however I think that this adds to the general underlying fear atmosphere within the film. The film generally relys on the veiwers fear of the unknown, and my gosh, this film is guarenteed to scare the living daylights out of you.
If you never want to be confident walking upstairs or opening doors, then this film is for you!
Classic Japanese Horror March 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This film really is vastly superior to it's Hollywood remake. Tense and atmospheric, with far better acting, and completely lacking in the hollow gloss of the American version. The fear of these Japanese actors is far more real than anything I saw in the American version, and what's more, the mood of the film is far more expertly crafted; subtle.
It concerns a family who have gone missing, and several social workers who are sent out to investigate their apparently abandoned home. What follows are a series of sinister and genuinely unsettling chapters all of which use a very visceral and striking directorial approach, which is characteristic of Japanese horror films. Lurking cats, oddly creepy children and the frequent use of striking visual imagery are all used to great effect.
That's what makes this film so enjoyable: a great sense of style, subtlety, supernatural suspense, and some genuinely creepy scenes. Which all goes to show that excessive gore and half-naked, blonde American actresses are superfluous to great horror films.
Truly Chilling Japanese Horror. January 23, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Thankfully I saw this before the (idiot-friendly) American remake with Buffy in it. This is a very dark film. It has all the atmosphere and full fat strangeness that was lacking in the remake. Basically the central theme is about a cursed house and the way it affects all the unfortunate people who come into contact with it. Note: it does not have a happy ending. The message seems to be that revenge is is circular and infinite. The film relies on psychological horror rather than tiresome shlock and this is what makes it so effective. This also means that the average hollywood teen slasher fest viewer will probably not find this of interest.
Slow-burning, intelligent horror that is genuinely creepy. October 22, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
By now, most audiences will be fairly familiar with the Japanese series of films known as Ju On: The Grudge; the phenomenally successful saga that began with the straight to video projects Ju On: The Curse, parts 1 and 2 - in which jealousy and adultery in a quaint Japanese suburb leads to an awful murder that marks the house for anyone who subsequently enters it - right the way through to the larger-budgeted Hollywood remake of the film in question and it's equally glossy sequel. Subsequent films following on from The Curse have taken the initial murder as their starting point and created around it a film of loosely connected horror vignettes; mostly in which a series of hapless characters end up in the film's iconic haunted house and then find themselves marked for death by the two most prominent apparitions of the story.
If you have already seen the American re-make of The Grudge with Sarah Michelle Geller then there's a good chance that this Japanese original will come as something of shock. Unlike its US counterpart, this grudge features no real central character and has no real plot development (at least, not in the traditional sense). I personally don't see this as a bad thing, as it allows director Takashi Shimizu to concentrate on crafting a number of scenes of gripping high tension - as the collection of disparate innocents who unknowingly come into contact with the infamous house must come to turns with the unexplainable horror that is happening all around them - but obviously, viewers who look for things like narrative closure, explanations of plot developments and something approaching a hero that they can root for might be sorely disappointed.
As I mentioned above, this version of The Grudge instead strings together a series of inter-woven scenes that establish the significance of the curse whist setting up a number of fantastic, edge-of-your seat moments of haunted house horror. This isn't a gritty gore-fest with annoying, smug, ultra-cynical characters (as seems to be the trend with much contemporary horror - think Wolf Creek, Hostel, Cabin Fever, The Hills Have Eyes remake and 28 Weeks Later) but rather, the kind of horror that should appeal to anyone who has had to walk home late at night through an empty park and felt the presence of someone (or something) following closely behind. Your heart starts racing as you quicken your step and become convinced that you can hear footsteps rapidly approaching from the left of your shoulder! When you finally pick up the courage to turn around and look, you realise your mind has been playing tricks on you, but the thrill was still heart-stopping regardless.
I prefer this kind of horror, which is why I'm such a huge fan of the horror films coming out of Japan, China and North Korea; great works like The Eye trilogy, Wishing Stairs, Abnormal Beauty, Premonition, Infection, Chaos, A Tale of Two Sisters and Takashi Shimizu's own Grudge-follow up Reincarnation. It's slow moving and slow building, almost ambient even; often coming at you from the rear speakers rather than full and on in your face, which for me, really creates a great, eerie atmosphere that works perfectly if you're watching it at 1:30 AM and have to pause for a toilet break and to let the dog out to stretch her legs.
Unlike a lot of his American contemporaries, Takashi Shimizu realises that horror isn't about what you see, but what you don't see, and with this in mind he saves any prolonged glimpses of our ghostly antagonists until right towards the very end. He also manages to create a wonderful feeling of isolation, alienation and hopeless emptiness; not only from the haunted house so central to the story, but even in the brightly-lit suburban streets, schools, office blocks and apartment buildings that our characters inhabit. The film is also shot very simply and traditionally, with none of the hyper-cutting and frantic camera movements of western horror, which again, gives the Grudge a more believable and authentic feeling that only heightens the senses of horror and tension. This is also helped by the wonderful performances of the cast who manage to ably convey the right sense of fraught emotion without descending into screaming histrionics.
For me, The Grudge is great horror. I'm not even going to call it great Japanese horror because it goes even beyond that. This is horror for those who want chills rather than spills, and those who like to invest some serious time in something that is slower, more deliberate and more dramatic than the usual stalk and slash type stuff (not that I don't love that kind of horror as well, but it's nice to have an intelligent alternative). As mentioned previously, there will be some viewers who won't want to invest their time in such a film that has no obvious sense of narrative and no single identifiable character, but at the end of the day, that's their decision. But they're clearly missing out!
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