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Movie Review

Ju On (2000)

July 23, 2004

FILM REVIEW; Beware the Ghosts in the Closet (And Virtually Everywhere Else)

Published: July 23, 2004

Is there a new breed of Japanese horror film?

There's certainly the work of Hideo Nakata, whose 1998 ''Ring'' made a mountain of money in Asia and was remade in Hollywood as ''The Ring,'' with Naomi Watts. So far, ''The Ring'' has yielded a prequel, two sequels and a couple of Japanese television series. In a sense, it has also yielded ''Ju-On: The Grudge,'' a 2003 film by Takashi Shimizu that shares the tone, look and narrative techniques of Mr. Nakata's film. (Mr. Shimizu is also filming an American remake of ''Ju-On,'' starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jason Behr.)

Common to these movies is the idea of an epidemic, a series of deaths touched off by a mysterious videotape (''Ring'') or by time spent in a haunted house, as in Mr. Shimizu's film.

In ''Ju-On,'' the epidemic begins when Rika (Megumi Okina), a social worker, visits an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease, who has been taken into the Tokyo home of her son and daughter-in-law. Rika finds the house deserted except for the mute, nodding old woman, but then she discovers a frightened little boy, his skin the grayish color of a cadaver, hiding in a closet. The boy, much subsequent investigation reveals, was killed five years ago, the victim of the house's previous owner, who killed both his child and his unfaithful wife in a homicidal rage.

Mr. Shimizu's conceit is that a great rage, like that of the murderous father, leaves an evil presence behind, an evil that can bubble up in other people and drive them to acts of violence. As Rika investigates the circumstances around the boy's death, the possessed, as well as other ghostly, malevolent beings, rise up to attack her and her ever-shrinking circle of friends.

Visually, ''Ju-On,'' which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, is muted and discreet, with none of the gothic accumulation of detail that characterizes most contemporary American horror movies. The color-coordinated costumes and sets are mostly beige, and the film's slow, deliberate rhythms have a lulling effect, broken only (and shrewdly) by Mr. Shimizu's sudden injections of violence.

Structurally, Mr. Shimizu toys with the story line. The film unfolds as a series of interlocking flashbacks, beginning with Rika's first visit to the house and then going back and forth in time to catch its other victims as they walk into its various traps. (One of the evil force's manifestations is a female figure seemingly spun out of black smoke.)

The approach keeps viewers involved and guessing, since they have to reconstruct the time frame from clues (a repeated line of dialogue, a prop) provided in each sequence.

''Ring'' has many of these characteristics as well, but it is more fertile in its concept. ''Ju-On'' turns into a rote series of killings, with each new sequence introduced by a title with the name of its primary victim. Because there is a new hero to identify with every 10 minutes, the viewer isn't drawn into a sustained suspense, but is merely subjected to a series of more or less foreseeable shocks.

What does the haunted house represent? In ''Ring,'' the fatal video comes to embody all of the cultural forces (television, primarily) drawing the Japanese away from the traditionally tight structures of work and family. In ''Ju-On,'' it seems that the notion of family itself has become frightening for the Japanese; the strict bonds celebrated and reinforced in the classic Ozu films of the 1950's here seem like burdens, obligations that -- if they can't be escaped -- will crush the individual beneath their weight.

The most frightening figure in ''Ju-On'' is not the ghost boy, who turns up before most of the murders, but the old woman Rika finds abandoned at the film's beginning. The responsibility of children to parents, of the present to the past, is one of the pillars of Japanese culture. ''Ju-On'' suggests that knocking it out will unleash great and consuming chaos -- a chaos, as always in horror films, to be both dreaded and relished.

The Grudge

Written and directed by Takashi Shimizu; in Japanese, with English subtitles; director of photography, Tokusho Kikumura; edited by Nobuyuki Takahashi; music by Shiro Sato; production designer, Toshiharu Tokiwa; produced by Taka Ichise; a Vitagraph release of a Lions Gate Entertainment Film. At the Angelika Film Center, Mercer and Houston Streets, Greenwich Village. Running time: 92 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Megumi Okina (Rika Nishina), Misaki Ito (Hitomi Tokunaga), Misa Uehara (Izumi Toyama), Yui Ichikawa (Chiharu), Kanji Tsuda (Katsuya Tokunaga) and Yoji Tanaka (Yuuji Toyama).

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