It has a high creepiness quotient with a few good scares, but not much of a story.
Comment
08/13/04
Ju-On: The Grudge (2004)
56
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:68
Fresh:38
Rotten:30
Average Rating:5.8/10
Consensus: The film grows more repetitive as it goes on, and as a result, the scares lessen.
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Synopsis: A volunteer home care worker, Nishina Rika (Megumi Okina), enters the home of a bed-ridden patient and discovers a strange ghostly presence lurking behind a door sealed with duct tape. Her... [More]
Starring: Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Euhara, Yui Ichikawa
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Reviews for Ju-On: The Grudge
... 90 minutes of ghost story goosebumps. Shimizu has an old-fashioned sense of scary movies and creates an atmosphere of dread from simple techniques...
08/13/04
Takashi Shimizu sets up a scare moment, and then repeats for 90 minutes.
08/12/04
One of the freakiest, most unsettling movies to come out of Japan in the past few years.
08/12/04
An effective scary movie, if not always a coherent one.
08/08/04
Shimizu chooses cruel psychological suspense over gore and succeeds in spinning a minimal plot into a panorama of malice.
08/05/04
Top CriticDivided into chapters, the film jumps around in time, which means that we get to observe Shimizu's utter failure to develop his characters from endless narrative angles.
08/05/04
Let's put an end to the whole creepy scraggly-haired little girl looking through the tops of her eyes and making groaning sounds thing. This has to stop now.
07/29/04
A masterfully creepy little import, a deeply unsettling daisy chain of expanding terror.
07/26/04
I'm sure I've seen Juon before, but the year was 1972, the hour was midnight, it was introduced by a cackling Vincent Price and the people weren't speaking Japanese.
07/24/04
Shimizu generates a sense of palpable dread in each segment, expertly manipulating tried-and-true scare tactics supplemented by a truly inspired use of spooky sound effects.
07/23/04
There are a few effective scenes ... but not enough to keep Ju-on on the fright track.
07/23/04
Its shapelessness and the cultural differences in acting style will keep this version filed under 'cult oddity.'
07/23/04
Just like your average American horror franchise, Ju-On repeats the same handful of motifs over and over again, then appears to collapse into incoherence.
07/23/04
Horror fans will hold a grudge against writer/director Takashi Shimizu for conjuring some of the most frightening wraiths in cinematic history, only to dull their terror with repetition and a convoluted plot.
07/23/04
While it's low on blood, it's high on the good stuff like dread, spooky atmospherics and tension.
07/23/04
Top CriticWhat follows is indeed scary. However, the film's repetitious, episodic structure seems to unnecessarily alleviate the building tension, making it a far less frightening film than it might have been.
07/23/04
Top CriticThe viewer isn't drawn into a sustained suspense, but is merely subjected to a series of more or less foreseeable shocks.
07/22/04
Top CriticA series of scare scenes that seem arbitrary even by the lax standards of the genre. If you like a little logic to go with your cinematic chills, you'd better look elsewhere.
07/22/04
Occasionally scary, never coherent Ring wannabe.
07/21/04
Latest News for Ju-On: The Grudge
March 01, 2006:
Second "Grudge" Rolls Into Production
Head on over to the Ghost House Pictures website and you'll find a new press release that'll thrill all you ravenous "Grudge" holders. Seems the sequel just started... More...
October 18, 2005:
Next Asia-to-America Horror Remakes? Two Separate "Eye"s
For those who just can't get enough of American remakes like "The Ring," "The Grudge," and "Dark Water," get ready to celebrate. Paramount's got a... More...
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