I wouldn't call this a bad movie. I just found it profoundly uninteresting. Continuity was a problem for me in this film; because it skips between time periods and is constantly introducing new characters and settings I found it hard keeping up with who was supposed to be who and where they were--for instance, because of an unclear transition I thought a character was still fleeing a haunted office building when she was actually going to her apartment and couldn't understand why the elevator she was in was going up, not down. It could be that the filmmakers wanted to create a deliberate sense of disorientation and panic to match what the characters were experiencing. But I just felt frustration at not being able to make sense of what was going on and impatience at the banality of the images being thrown at me.

I must say despite all of it's shortcomings in terms of character development and pacing (Jesus Christ it should have ended at about the fifth segment!!!!) Takashi Shimizu's "Ju-On" remains one of the most startlingly unconventional horror films I've ever seen, even by ridiculous Japanese standards. Its baroque high concept fantasy elements are surreal and outlandish no doubt, but writer/director Takashi Shimizu chooses to ground all this with some of the most flat and restrained direction and cinematography in any genre. The movie looks like it could have been shot on some teenage kid's digital video camera (and given the budget it might very well have been). There's no "movie bullshit": everything that happens just more or less happens. It goes a long way for selling these fantastic happenings as real life to the audience. The music score is fantastic, choosing to go for haunting mournful tunes instead of standard Psycho-inspired hijinks. And of course the sound design is responsible for at least 25% of the scares (cue the famous throat rattle...) And then there's the ending: I wouldn't call it a "twist ending" because the film doesn't spend much of its time trying to pull the wool over your eyes and the ending doesn't dramatically reshape your understanding of the story up til that point; but it is indeed a clever surprise! Very much in the great Lovecraft tradition: spinning a yarn til its end and then throwing in that nice extra surprise at the last moment! (Shimuzu's Lovecraft influences are on display even more prominently in his later and much better film "Marebito"). All this is fantastic, but Ju-On fails on one key level and that is pacing. The film drags horribly in between spook scenes. The film slaves to its gimmick of introducing a new main character every ten minutes. The idea starts out novel but grinds on well past its worth. Instead of roughly ten sequences at roughly ten minutes each, five sequences at twenty would have been far more effective. Only a few of the perspective changes are essential to telling the story and having to pick up the pieces every ten minutes as to where we are in the plot is distracting. Also this would have allowed for more character development, instead of a barrage of exposition as to who the new victim is. Again, this is obviously Lovecraft influence, but it's very uncinematic. The acting is pretty standard: no one stands out which is kind of appropriate since its a revolving cast of characters. Overall, a flawed but worthwhile effort and a must for any horror fan.

This movie is only scary if you are kind of person who jumps at there one shadow. This is not scary. This movie is badly written. Badly acted. Good special effects. But what an awful ending. This movie is pooh pooh. Pooh pooh, pooh pooh. Don't see this movie. It is a waste of time and money. This is a bad movie. Bad movie bad movie bad movie bad movie. This story of man who kills his cat, kills his wife, kills his son. And then they ghost just decide to kill every one. Stupid not scary. I need more lines and I am running out of things to say. Save your money and don't see this movie. Awful awful awful awful awful awful. If you want to scared see Dracula (1931).

There is a house in Tokyo where every visitor ends up dead. A child and a mother live there. Both are ghosts. Their presence stems from a traumatic event in the house's past. The story follows a variety of characters that enter this house.The film is structured into a series of short vignettes. We follow different people who encounter the horror of the mysterious house. To be honest, the plot only barely makes any sense. It seems to be no more than really an excuse to string together a number of scary moments. This is excusable on the grounds that this is a genuinely unsettling film. It's unnerving in that way that the best Japanese ghost movies are. The cultural difference between east and west means that these movies come at us in ways we can't predict as easily. The Grudge, like Ring, is no different in this respect and its scare factor stems quite a bit from this unknown quality. There is a constant atmosphere of dread in this one.If it perhaps had a little more coherence it would have the potential to reach the top bracket of horror. As it is, it works as an exercise in inventively scary Japanese horror moments. For me this is a perfectly acceptable compensation, as it's quite rare for any film to scare you in the way that this one sometimes does. So with that in mind, it's quite obvious that this movie has achieved something impressive.