GORE IN THE STORE
REVIEWS BY FANS FOR FANS
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

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JU-ON WHITE GHOST Written and Directed by Ryuta Miyake, Story by Takashi Shimizu.
JU-ON: BLACK GHOST Written and Directed by Mari Asato, Story by Takashi Shimizu.

(Cert 15) DVD released 26th April 4Digital Media RRP £15.99 Language: Japanese, English subtitles.

Two gore fest films in one DVD package, 'JU-ON: White Ghost' and 'JU-ON: Black Ghost'. These two films are the latest instalment in the mythical dark spirit stories made famous in the original Japanese cult film 'The Grudge'. Not having seen the original I was coming to this franchise with fresh eyes and curiosity.

JU-ON:White Ghost opens with the figure of a dead man hanged by the neck from a tree in a bleak winter scene. Beside him a tape player winds to a stop having recorded final words and a cardboard box lays curiously in the snow beside it. As the camera pulls back the long flowing black hair from a disembodied head sprouts from within the box and oozes over the sides. A powerful and creepy scene to open with, and a promise of an intense and shocking mystery/horror?

Unfortunately such promise was never delivered. After the graphic opening we follow a young cake delivery guy dressed as Santa on Christmas Eve as he approaches a large suburban house. He rings the bell but there is no answer. The door is open so he cautiously enters and a female voice calls out to him saying, "I will be there in a moment". The house appears empty and quite, but as the delivery boy enters further into the house the figure of a young school girl appears and quietly walks down the hallway and out of sight. Now, we all know that it would be bad news to go any further into this creepy home but ignoring the warnings of every horror story the delivery boy follows the girl further into the house. This is where the film works best in creating some weight to the suspense and drawing us into the story. We are then treated to a succession of bloody revelations as the delivery boy witnesses in every room of the house the aftermath of the brutal massacre of the whole family, a disembodied bloody body laying on a bed, the charred remains of a burnt figure in a bath tub. This now sets up the confusing premise of the story. As the film unfolds we are witness to the troubles of the family and the gradual break down of the farther as he struggles to deal with his failure of the bar exam and hold his life together. The curse of the the White Ghost takes him over and so he systematically murders each of his extended family sharing the home. A horror film by numbers, one by one any innocent person who comes into contact with the house becomes possessed and kills anyone around them and themselves. The film makers have chosen to construct the story in such a way as to tease us with these moments of terror keeping us guessing (even if we don't care) as to where it is all going, chopping up the narrative into a succession of half baked scenes, contrived gore and ludicrous characters leading to the moment of the family massacre. The structure is one of many problems for me, because the narrative is so chopped up we are never allowed to get close to any of the characters and there certainly doesn't seem to have been any effort to add any depth to the original tale. Instead the writers have opted to string together one laughable cliche after another, cheap visuals and characters as creepy as if from a 'Scooby Doo' episode, complete with a dithering basketball carrying granny! The central character of the youngest daughter of the family appears throughout the story as the possessed spirit of the dead girl with disfigured face and 'creepy' croaky voice. The scenes are occasionally inventive in terms of gore and the suspense is handled appropriately, but none of the characters have any truth or substance and for me this is where I struggle to be engaged in the story. The budget is obviously small shot on video and make up effects questionable, especially with the ghostly girl make up looking like a mask you can buy from Asda on Halloween. With a series of teasing scenes depicting killings and the mess of structure in the story the confused and winding plot never really reaches any kind of satisfying conclusion cheating us all the way. The film relies heavily on efforts to make us jump and uses sudden overbearing raised volume to compensate the lack of emotional drive to scenes and this is all very heavy handed. These tricks are obvious and belong to the gory B movies of the seventies.

After 'White Ghost' leaving me unsatisfied I settled down to watch JU-ON: Black Ghost. I was immediately optimistic (as I was with White Ghost) as the opening scene unfolded. A young boy on his way home from school stops in the rain as he see's a pretty young girl at a hospital window. The girl suddenly screams and bangs on the window before falling away and violently fitting on the floor. Again this was a powerful opening and drew you in with a promise of great things to come. 'Black Ghost' centres on Yuko, a pretty young nurse who is caring for the little girl at the window, Fukie, who has been diagnosed with a nasty "Cyst" in her body. The "Cyst" is in fact the remains of an unborn twin inside of Fukie, who has begun to manifest itself with resentment and hatred for her sister, and cursing anyone who comes into contact with her. 'Black Ghost' for me has more of an engaging story and manages to weave in a core narrative that you cling to throughout as you feel for little Fukie, willing her to overcome her illness and get the right help. Nurse Nuko (Ai Kago) adds a much needed weight to the story as she is taken into Fukie's trust and becomes increasingly concerned for her. The young Hana Matsumoto plays Fukie with honesty and vulnerability moving the story into a more credible and dramatically engaging vein, however I do have the same issues with this tale as with 'White Ghost' as again I found myself struggling to follow the story with its interlaced sequences of killings. Characters come and go very quickly and you struggle to piece together their relevance. I love non linear story telling it can be exciting and rewarding, but with both of these films the choice has been to pad out the story with as much formulaic gore as possible strung around what is in essence an interesting story, but then to mix it up in an attempt to disguise the plot holes and one diminutional characters. When you have an array of under developed characters introduced and then killed off in a variety of ways I struggle to care and therefore ultimately leaves me cold.

David Hillman.

© London FrightFest Ltd. 2000-2010
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