User reviews

I always get kind of agitated when producers feel a need to make sequels. I have never seen one that actually mattered. This one didn't either.

Having said that I do feel a need to actually recommend this Ju-On part. Besides the obvious rerun of old tricks, some of the new material is actually quite interesting and well-thought of. For example the thuds on the wall (that the couple hears every night around 12.30)are later explained in an eerie way. The wig-on-the-floor-thing was nicely done.

Finally, I thought the birth was original as well as the ending of the movie.

All in all entertaining (for a "Part two" movie) but not a MUST SEE.

By now, most audiences will be fairly familiar with the Japanese series of films known as Ju On: The Grudge; the phenomenally successful saga that began with the straight to video projects Ju On: The Curse, parts 1 and 2 - in which jealousy and adultery in a quaint Japanese suburb leads to an awful murder that marks the house for anyone who subsequently enters it - right the way through to the larger-budgeted Hollywood remake of the film and it's equally glossy sequel. Subsequent films following on from The Curse have taken the initial murder as their starting point and created around it a film of loosely connected horror vignettes, mostly in which a series of hapless characters end up in the film's iconic haunted house and then find themselves marked for death by the two most prominent apparitions of the story.

If you have already seen the American re-make of The Grudge with Sarah Michelle Geller then there's a good chance that this follow up to the Japanese original will come as something of shock. Unlike its US counterpart, this grudge features no real central character and has no real plot development (at least, not in the traditional sense). I personally don't see this as a bad thing, as it allows director Takashi Shimizu to concentrate on crafting a number of scenes of gripping high tension - as the collection of disparate innocents (this time a TV crew shooting a horror film based upon the events of the original film) who unknowingly come into contact with the infamous house and then must come to terms with the unexplainable horror that is happening all around them. However, viewers who look for things like narrative closure, explanations of plot developments and something approaching a hero that they can root for might be sorely disappointed.

As I mentioned above, this version of The Grudge instead strings together a series of inter-woven scenes that establish the significance of the curse whist setting up a number of fantastic, edge-of-your seat moments of haunted house horror. This isn't a gritty gore-fest with annoying, smug, ultra-cynical characters (as seems to be the trend with much contemporary horror - think Wolf Creek, Hostel, Cabin Fever, The Hills Have Eyes remake and 28 Weeks Later) but rather, the kind of horror that should appeal to anyone who has had to walk home late at night through an empty park and felt the presence of someone (or something) following closely behind. Your heart starts racing as you quicken your step and become convinced that you can hear footsteps rapidly approaching from the left of your shoulder! When you finally pick up the courage to turn around and look, you realise your mind has been playing tricks on you, but the thrill was still heart-stopping regardless.

I prefer this kind of horror, which is why I'm such a huge fan of the horror films coming out of Japan, China and North Korea; great works like The Eye trilogy, Wishing Stairs, Abnormal Beauty, Premonition, Infection, Chaos, A Tale of Two Sisters and Takashi Shimizu's own Grudge-follow up Reincarnation. It's slow moving and slow building, almost ambient even; often coming at you from the rear speakers rather than full and on in your face, which for me, really creates a great, eerie atmosphere that works perfectly if you're watching it at 1:30 AM and have to pause for a toilet break and to let the dog out to stretch her legs.

Unlike a lot of his American contemporaries, Takashi Shimizu realises that horror isn't about what you see, but what you don't see, and with this in mind he saves any prolonged glimpses of our ghostly antagonists until right towards the very end. He also manages to create a wonderful feeling of isolation, alienation and hopeless emptiness; not only from the haunted house so central to the story, but even in the brightly-lit suburban streets, schools, office blocks and apartment buildings that our characters inhabit. The film is also shot very simply and traditionally, with none of the hyper-cutting and frantic camera movements of western horror, which again, gives the Grudge a more believable and authentic feeling that only heightens the senses of horror and tension. This is also helped by the wonderful performances of the cast who manage to ably convey the right sense of fraught emotion without descending into screaming histrionics.

For me, The Grudge 2 is easily as great the first instalment; although some viewers may find the more outrageous elements of the closing scenes to be a little too much (I'm guessing the planned third instalment will pick up on and explain some of these ideas, but we'll have to wait and see). This is horror for those who want chills rather than spills, and those who like to invest some serious time in something that is slower, more deliberate and more dramatic than the usual stalk and slash type stuff (not that I don't love that kind of horror as well, but it's nice to have an intelligent alternative). As mentioned previously, there will be some viewers who won't want to invest their time in such a film that has no obvious sense of narrative and no single identifiable character, but at the end of the day, that's their decision. But they're clearly missing out!

I Thought that Ju-on 2 Was a great horror film just as good as the first film. While driving, a pregnant horror-movie actress Kyôko Harase and her fiancé are in a car crash caused by the Toshio's friend. Kyôko loses her baby and her fiancé ends up in a coma. Kyôko was cursed together with a television crew when they shot a show in the haunted house where Kayako was brutally murdered by her husband years ago. While each member of the team dies. Kyôko is informed that she has a three-and-a-half-month-old foetus in her womb. I Thought that Ju-on 2 was a great horror film. I felt that This film which was directed by Shimizu Takashi was more psychologically disturbing than the first film. and i felt that it had a very creepy feel to it.

This sequel to the Japanese hit surrounds how the grudge curse affects the lives of a TV show crew and an actress who do a show from the accursed home. Ju-On: The Grudge 2 's story is told in the same non-linear way that the first one was, but this time around rather than being effective it seems to just muddy the whole film. It will leave you scratching your head at times and might even be a bit frustrating. The sequel lacked the overall atmosphere of the first one. It had several good chills or two and even a boo now and then but the overall effect is a bit lackluster and disappointing. The moral of this story is to be wary of ticked off people, especially dead ones and for heavens sake clean that stain on the carpet, it may well be a portal to another zip code.

The Grudge 2 is surprisingly scary movie, even tough it's not extremely good as a movie. Most of this is merit to the eerie atmosphere of the film.

Now, the plot itself is quite simple: a TV group is making a documentary of a house, which has a history of violence. Angry spirits of the house start slaughtering the group from some reason or another, it really wasn't explained why, but that's what happens in the flick. You could actually say, that The Grudge 2 is almost totally plot less movie, that shows one killing after another, in not in any particular order.

And for another thing, the DVD I watched it from suffered from extremely poor encoding: there was unforgivable amount of pixelation visible on the TV. And it was official rental DVD. I hope you will have better luck with the image quality.

Ju-on: The Grudge 1 (2002) is brilliant. It should be watched before any other Ju-on/Grudge film. A real one-off: trippy, atmospheric, unpredictable, well-acted, nicely shot, genuine chills, great ending....all the elements work. Makes my Top Ten Horror Movies.

I've also seen the first two: Ju-on: Curse 1&2 (both decent but non-essential 7/10), and the first two american ones (6/10 & 4/10). Now the second japanese Grudge...which disappointingly is one of the worst entries...

...it's somehow flat. There's no real atmosphere. The 'scares' are tired rehashes. The trippy factor is missing. The main actress is dull. All the acting is a little basic. Sound-design seems off. Nothing really memorable happens, even the 'twist' felt a bit meh and is an uninspired ripoff of a certain famous american horror-classic from the late-60's.

It was the wrong decision to once again base the story at that same house, especially when the previous film hinted at a more profound event spreading outwards. Deciding not to go the ambitious route and staying safe by sticking to the house and utilising the same scares means this sequel is non-essential viewing...and unlike The Curse it doesn't even have atmosphere or memorable scenes going for it.

So out of now six Grudge movies, the only one definitely worth watching is 2002's Ju-on: The Grudge. The others are for completists. At this stage I don't feel inspired to check out the rest of the series.

Next jap-horror on the watchlist will be either 90's Spiral or the 60's Onibaba. Watch this space :)

The rage of Kayako and her son Toshio continue in this sequel to "Ju-On: The Grudge." Creepier and scarier than the first film, Ju-On 2 begins with a young couple and a tragic car accident which leaves a pregnant television star named Kyoko devastated. With her fiancé in a coma and her unborn baby supposedly lost, she continues with her blossoming career in horror films. But when she agrees to appear in a pseudo-documentary about the "haunted house" where Kayako and Toshio still "reside," the virus of the Grudge begins anew. Soon, everyone involved with the production is missing or dead, and Kyoko, who has recently been informed that her baby is not lost after all, begins to realize that what she is carrying may not be hers at all.

Ju-On 2 is definitely much more scarier than its predecessor. Disturbing sound effects, jerky camera movements and one dizzy nightmarish scene after another literally left me reeling, feeling as confused and freaked out as the characters in the film. There are some great visual effects here; Kayako and her wild hair spread over a ceiling, tendrils dropping down into lethal nooses; a wig come to hideous life and the ghostly blue Toshio staring out of the darkness. The ending was a work of morbid art, leaving me quite stunned. "Ju-On 2" has proved beyond a doubt that sequels are not always a bad thing, and sometimes, they're even better!

Highly recommended!

The first film Ju On: The Grudge, is personally one of the scariest films I have seen so I had high expectations of the sequel. I was sadly disappointed.

Ju On: The Grudge 2 really was a pointless exercise in film-making, that starts off poorly, barely keeps it's head above water in the middle & completely falls apart in the final third, it appears that the good ideas were used in the first film.

Sure you can get away with a lot in the world of horror but too many of the plot twist were just comically absurd & the whole Chiharu sub-plot was completely irrelevant to anything else in the film & didn't need to be there.

The whole rebirth concept reminded me a lot of the first Ringu sequel(Rasen) & guess what, it didn't really work for that series either but I did think that one it's own Rasen was a better film than Grudge 2.

I was disappointed by the original but this sequel was much, much better. Everything about it has been improved - the plot, the character development, the direction, the mood, the fear factor. The over all feeling of this film is very very creepy. It's exactly how a ghost story should be. It doesn't give you the kind of scares that make you jump out of your skin like some movies do but what it does give you is a very uneasy and haunting feeling.

The arrangement and fragmentation of script was excellent. It's broken up into separate stories or chapters like the first one but they've played with the time line in this one in a very wonderful way which contributes to the ghostly feeling of the film as a whole. The story with the banging on the wall was a particular favourite of mine, and, I think, pretty genius.

I am so glad I watched this! It has now become one of my favourite Japanese horror films.

I remember seeing the preview of this movie and thinking "wow" but sadly watching this movie left me with a now familiar feeling of "huh?".

Okay I kind of get the ending (I won't spoil it) but some middle parts of the movie were just plain confusing and just seemed to be there for the sake of cheap scares or fill time, My main complaint is the Chiharu part of the story that just confused Me and seemed to be part of a totally different movie all together (it reminded Me of A Nightmare on Elm Street), I didn't mind the unexplained elements in Asian cinema at first but sadly it's starting to show up in more and more movies and is imo becoming a cop out to avoid explaining confusing elements of movies which don't add up or fit into the overall plot.

Overall an okay movie but if I see one more Sedako style scene rip off I'll scream.

6/10

I bought this on DVD at Christmas without having seen it previously. I did the same with "The Grudge" and it was a great experience; my friend and I (23 and 21 at the time) were so scared we had to watch "Finding Nemo" to calm us down. I refused to watch "The Grudge 2" on my own, so waited for the same friend to watch it. Now, two friends (25 and 23 now) have never been less scared in their lives. I've been more scared by toy commercials than this film. It just seemed far too contrived and too similar to the first film. Bits of it were good, but instead of being scared we just said "That was good". This film is a big let down, let's just hope the 3rd one gets the series back on it's feet.

I'm happy to say that, after a slight disappointment with 'Ju On: The Grudge,' the series returns to form with this installment.

Just when you thought Takashi Shimizu had done everything there was to do with 'Ju On,' this third sequel (and second theatrical film) takes things in a slightly new direction...and gives us some of the most terrifying scenes yet.

Yes, Toshio and his Mum are still on the prowl. Yes, the plot is told in the same disjointed segment style. But, without spoiling the surprises, some new and unexpected twists are added to the mythology. And just as expected, there are plenty of images and sounds that will haunt you till your dying day.

I can't wait to see what Shimizu has in store with the fifth film (the American installment) and dread the thought of seeing these images on a big screen!

Rented this movie after seeing The Grudge (American remake) in the movies couple of weeks ago. While the American remake of Ju-On was extraordinary scary and so dark, this Japanese sequel let me down a little. I hadn't seen Ju-On (the first theatrical in Japanese), but friends told me that the original Japanese versions are always a tad harder edged than the American remakes. Well, not this one. The Grudge (with Sarah) made me scream and wanting to close my eyes every ten minutes. It was a new kind of horror, so I had to see more of this. But "Ju-On: The Grudge 2" is not as dark as the American remake. The atmosphere isn't as pressurizing and the camera viewpoints and the effects just aren't that great to scare the beezeejes out of you. Of course, it contains several freak moments, but in the end I was like: "Well, OK". Instead, the American The Grudge haunted me for weeks!

sorry it's really movie i couldn't understand at all first of all the name's were very strange to me then the plot was very confused the relationships between the characters of the movie another mystery what's happened to the mother is she died ? a lot of questions which you will never get an answer to them it's really so bad but still the main idea of the movie is not so bad this haunted house and whoever connect with it is disappeared by somehow i think i like it maybe the language has it's effect my mother tongue is Arabic and as you know we all used to English but Japanaise is very unfamiliar . It could be .the end of it was so mysterious don't get the meaning of this young girl with the mother and why she killed her

I Start of with the The Plot: As driving, the pregnant horror-movie actress Kyôko Harase and her fiancé are in a car crash caused by the Toshio's friend. Kyôko loses her baby and her fiancé winds up in a coma. Kyôko was cursed together with a television crew when they shot a show in the haunted house where Kayako was brutally murdered by her husband years ago. While each member of the team dies or disappears, Kyôko is informed that she has a three-and-a-half-month-old foetus in her womb.

The first Ju-on-The Grudge was the creepiest movie I have ever seen.

It scared me for two days,Just when you thought The Grudge couldn't get any scarier then Ju-on-The Grudge they bring the Spine-chilling Ju-on-The Grudge 2.

This is one hell of a scary movie, From the start to thr end you will be left confused by some scenes,

the more confusing it gets, the more it creeps you out!

This movie has some very creepy scenes that keep you on the edge of your seat but then the last ten minutes of the movie was just petrifying,

it scared the living daylight out me! Acting from the whole cast was great!

This sequel was more creepy then the first movie but less scary then the first but It's one of the best horror sequel EVER! I give 9/10

"Ju-on:The Grudge 2" is the sequel to the smash-hit "Ju-on:The Grudge", and is the fourth installment into the "Ju-on" series. Like it's precursor, it is told in chapters. All the chapters are somehow connected to the curse of the grudge.

Were you disappointed by "Ju-on:The Grudge"? Well, if you were (like me), you'll be surprised. This sequel was MUCH better than the original in almost every aspect. The scares were more scarier, there were more scares, tenser scenes, a LOT better acting, a much better story, and a more solid plot. I was really surprised by how good this sequel was. Ever heard of the old sequel rule? "Sequels are never as good as the originals"? Well, I' happy to say that that doesn't apply here.

So to sum it up, I really enjoyed this movie. It was a major improvement on the original film. If you're a fan of the Ju-on series, you have to watch this.

The first Ju-On is an influential classic.

When it comes to sequels I usually brace for the worst.

Let's face it. Horror sequels are usually cash grabs pushed on by producers.

But I was pleasantly surprised by this film. I like it more than the original actually.

Alot of effective scares in this.

And incredible cinematography that heightens everything.

Was quite creepy.

That been said, it does have some weaknesses. It's a good movie but falls short of being a truly great one.

I can certainly see why some people rate it higher. It is a creepy well done film.

It just lacks that indescribable "it" factor that would mark it as an exceptional great movie.