Juon: The Curse

I like to endlessly drop this wisdom-bomb: They stopped at Formula 409 because it works, and they’re still selling it today. What I’m saying is it’s easy to get stuck using formula because it has a built-in success rate that transcends mediocrity.

Whoops, this is Video Sewer taking over for the Review-Right 2001. I must have accidentally left it on last night. That was when I watched the straight-to-video (!) version of Juon and chickened out on going downstairs to turn off my trusty PC.

Juon concerns a couple of ghosts that just want to drive everyone crazy and then kill them. It’s easy to suss the ghosts’ MO through the six episodes that make up this movie. Each episode details a few hours in the life of anyone unfortunate enough to enter the ghosts’ house (a quite-nice three-bedroom in suburban Tokyo).

Throw notions of understanding plot and background out the window; if you’re not on the Juon-train, you’ll still ‘get it’.

In the crotch.

A character walks into the deserted house; let’s say her name is Miyaki. She nervously laughs with someone on her cell, and then hangs up to search through the house. Things get really quiet and she meets a pasty little boy. Then she’s alone and things are really quiet for 20 minutes before a black-haired ghost crawls after her making weird clicking noises.

Repeat.

Even hardcore horror goons like me are subject to the simple wiles of this formula, eventually nervously scurrying through the house turning on all the lights.

Is it just that creepy, black-haired, crawling Japanese women are scary? Is it the hair-raising noises in the soundtrack? The clicking? Or the willingness of Japanese directors and audiences to never accept the defusing of tension?

Who cares? This first video version of Juon is the strongest in the franchise perhaps due to the fact that it seems to have no story at all, just six people getting their wits scared-out. Even marred by bad CGI at a crucial moment, it’s much scarier than more-highly acclaimed Western horrors, with at least two sequences so dreadful and heart-stopping you'll literally be climbing the walls, no matter how many horror movies you've seen.

That formula shore do work.

(Editors note: This review was written before the release of Hollywood's The Grudge. While we sure think Sarah Michelle Gellar is cute, we are confident that Juon kicks The Grudge's ass.)