The Scariest Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: Halloween Weekend Repertory Cinema Picks
Ju-On: The Grudge (2002)
Directed by Takashi Shimizu
Ju-On: The Grudge has been maligned and lumped together with the rest of the Japanese horror films craze that took the world in the last decade, and it’s been ridiculed as well as turned into a franchise that can’t be taken seriously. But the original Shimizu film (which is actually a sequel to two direct-to-video films that work around the same mythology of ghosts and the violence of their deaths) is one of the deepest and most complex horror films of the Asian craze. It manages to be one of last decade’s most emotional exercises in grief and anger—expressed not through acting, but by camera movement and, above all, editing. The segmented narrative tells different tales of people and a cursed house where two violent murders happened, spanning years and different cultural backgrounds.
But the film doesn’t forget to be scary: the ghost that creeps under the covers of a bed was replicated in the remake because it’s one of the most effective creep-outs ever. But the film wins because it scares you and at the same time makes you understand why these ghosts bend time and space: towards the end, a scene shows two people looking at each other with such tenderness and sadness, you understand the idea of loss that permeates every cry for help and drip of blood that you saw before. Jaime Grijalba (October 27, 9:30pm at BAM’s “13 Cats”)