Ju-on: The Grudge (2003)

Review

This Japanese horror flick cheats and pulls cheap tricks at every juncture. The young filmmaker Takashi Shimizu seems to think that he can make every scene equally suspenseful and chilling by simply putting new characters in the same situation over and over again. Unfortunately, nobody told him that for the viewer to care about these charaters he'd have to create a relation with them. The premise for the film is a haunted house in Tokyo with a hidden history that kills virtually every person stepping inside it. The problem is that the only "scary" things in here are the editing and the cheesy use of sounds. The mystery is neither engaging nor original, and that poor little kid just looks like he's ready for a masquerade. Remade in 2004 by Shimizu with American actors in the leads as The Grudge.