Interesting... I just noticed that EVERY negative review so far (about 5) has been voted down and has a poor score. And, the ONLY relatively good review has a 10/10...? REALLY...??? I honestly wish people would stop doing that (sigh...)
Anyway... First, I should say that I have not seen the other Ju-on entries in this franchise so far. I know... start at the beginning, right...? Anyway, I pretty much have a good idea what the overall premise has been throughout the series of films, so I figured that since a FEW reviews weren't too bad about this one, it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and watch this one first since I happened to have it.
I will say that from what I know and from what I have read about the other Ju-on films, I'm guessing that people, unlike me, who HAVE seen the others will likely find this one somewhat repetitive in nature. But, since I HAVEN'T seen the others, I figured that there was a good chance that I would enjoy this one to some degree since with me the premise wouldn't have worn itself out yet. It honestly did start out fairly well right out of the gate with nice, drawn out suspenseful scenes and a decent atmosphere and it pretty much grabbed you right away. However, in my lowly and wretched opinion, I felt that after about 45 minutes or so, it basically was starting to repeat itself, and not in a terribly creative way. Just the basic 'Ju-on' premise that anyone who happens to walk into a cursed house gets snatched later. Annnnnnnnnnd... that was about it.... So quite honestly, right about that point in the movie, I really kind of lost interest.
There WERE some effective scares and individual scenes which were done quite well and directed in a way that was indeed scary. BUT... a handful of good scenes unfortunately do NOT necessarily make for a good film. My take on it, FWIW, is that perhaps if the director had changed up the look and feel of the film a bit more instead of having this continuously monotonous look, and if he had injected a LOT more 'Style' into the visuals, maybe that would have kept the audience's interest better and made up for the repetitive plot, I don't know...
So, a good start, definitely... but, ultimately I felt that it was way too monotonous in it's look and style. And the story never really seemed to go anywhere.
Sorry, but the film just wasn't really very interesting after a while, so I cannot really recommend it as having enough mood and style to carry it, which COULD have helped a lot considering the very simple nature of the story itself. I gave it a '5', which is a bit generous overall, but that's because I thought it started very well but sadly ran out of steam about half way through.
This is one of those cases where I would say, just read a good book instead...
