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Most of the Ju-On stories, including The Grudge, all feature the same elements. Since the short stories in 1998 to the most recent movie, The Grudge this year, the real-life stories behind the cursed house and its residents have terrified audiences. The new Netflix series Ju-On: Origins pays homage to the original movies, but takes things in a whole new direction. I expected the pale white ghosts, the cats, cursed homes, and more, which I did get, but I also got a lot of disturbing violence. Uncomfortable violence.
Written by Hiroshi Takahashi and Takashige Ichise, the series continues to tell a ‘true story’ which is set before the first Ju-On movie. The series introduces us to Haruka Honjo, an actress who hears footsteps in her apartment after her boyfriend visits a mysterious house. She seeks out the help of paranormal investigator, Yasuo Odajima, who focuses on solving the mystery behind the creepy house.
Much like the previous Ju-On and Grudge films, there are plenty of overlapping narratives that focus on several different characters. When I watched the films, I often had a hard time focusing on the different stories because of the way they were structured. With the Netflix series, you get six 30-minute episodes, which makes it easy to follow because of the transitions and the quick pace. The series focuses on a few different characters for each episode, over different decades. Characters that were featured in beginning episodes sometimes appear later in the series in a different decade. When it expands over decades, it focused on the trauma that the characters have gone through. I felt the presence of the curse in the characters that have grown up and still were terrified by the idea of the curse. The cursed house feels like a character itself, which the previous movies have all succeeded at as well. There were moments in the series that genuinely disturbed me. I watch a lot of horror films and don’t get creeped out often, but there were a few times in the series that I had to turn away.
There was a scene involving a pregnant woman and her husband which will probably go down as the most violent thing I have seen this year. tweet
By having this violence in the series, it makes the cursed house and Odajima’s mission more imperative. Since each episode moves quick and features terror instead of jump scares, it made the curse more sinister than we have seen before. You have been warned!
It’s not often that we get a series or movie that is so deep into its mythology and has countless amounts of things to watch that is better than previous installments. The new series is bold in its storyline and the trauma within it. It’s a bit hard to watch at times, but any fans of the Ju-On or Grudge films will find the series and its expanded direction worth watching.
Some people may go into Ju-On: Origins expecting deep connections to previous movies and you may be disappointed, but the fresh storytelling and elements to the long running franchise impressed me right away.
This series is in Japanese with english subtitles.
このシリーズは英語字幕付き日本語です
What did you think of this season? Sound off in the comments below!
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