Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on July 23, 2004, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Subtle spookery or head-spinning outrageousness? That’s the choice being offered by the pair of Japanese horror films going into limited U.S. release this month, with Lions Gate offering Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On beginning today and Pathfinder Pictures starting its platform release of Takashi Miike’s Gozu next week. Both directors have been celebrated as major players in the J-horror trend, though their reputations couldn’t be more different: Shimizu the formalist and Miike the wildman. There’s little comparison between these two particular films except their homeland, but simply judged on their individual ambitions, Gozu trumps Ju-On in overall effectiveness.
To express reservations about Ju-On at this point might seem to border on heresy, as the movie has made the leap to the States on a wave of hype, being hailed as one of the scariest movies of the decade, the new successor to Hideo Nakata’s justifiably praised Ringu, etc. Shimizu does possess a lot of Nakata’s talent for atmosphere, but the fractured storytelling of Ju-On—an element that has been lauded by many admirers—works against sustained scares.
Ju-On, as most fans know, translates as The Grudge (the title of Shimizu’s forthcoming U.S. remake), and the notion of a curse that’s not centered on a house or location, but that jumps from victim to victim like a virus, is an intriguing one. Shimizu does a nice job of setting up his concept, as young social worker Rika Nishina (Megumi Okina) visits the house of an old woman who appears to be in a terrorized state. Investigating further, Rika becomes the witness to the first manifestation of the curse—one born of the murder of a mother and son, whose rage leads their ghosts to “infect” a series of connected victims.
Shimizu’s spare, quiet style works for the movie for a while, and he whips up a few indelibly frightening images, like the female spirit Kayako (Takako Fuji) slithering down a staircase like a reptile, or her and spectral son Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) perched on the bed of a terrified girl like ghostly gargoyles. There’s also a simple but effective visual trick seen when one character rides an elevator. Yet the movie is less than the sum of its spooky parts, since as one new character after another is plagued by the duo, the story comes to bear the structure of an anthology in which every segment has the same tone and payoff. Instead of building an increasing sense of dread, the scares come in fits and starts, and the lack of a strong central character to identify with works against audience involvement. (Shimizu’s first direct-to-video installment of this series is actually creepier.)
The director clearly has a knack for creating a chilly mood, and his penchant for setting supernatural horrors in mundane, familiar settings promises truly scary things once he harnesses it to a stronger narrative. It’ll be interesting to see if, in the upcoming Grudge, his studio backers have imposed a more traditional storytelling style on Shimizu, and if so, whether it results in a more satisfying overall experience.
There’s no taming Miike, however; now notorious as the bad boy of Japanese cinema, he can always be counted on to flaunt notions of everything from conventional plotting to good taste. The results can be a mixed bag; I’ll admit I’m not a fan of the misogynistic and overlong Ichi the Killer or the wretched excess of Visitor Q. But Gozu finds him heading off the beaten path in a different direction, plunging into surrealistic weirdness and coming up with his best movie since Audition.
The movie opens with an act of over-the-top violence that’s typical of Miike, and pretty funny in an outrageous way (as long as you’re not a dog lover). This outburst on the part of yakuza Ozaki (Sho Aikawa) leads his bosses to assign his younger “brother” Minami (Hideki Sone) to take Ozaki out, but Minami can’t bring himself to kill his friend. Then Ozaki dies anyway, and his body vanishes from Minami’s car. Minami goes looking for it, and begins an odyssey through an off-kilter world of gender-blenders, a cow-headed demon and other odd types. To describe the plot in any more detail would spoil the fun, and would probably be impossible anyway.
Gozu is almost as much a series of setpieces as Ju-On, and Miike here shares Shimizu’s interest in having threatening paranormal figures invade recognizable everyday reality. Yet while Gozu doesn’t exactly make sense and (like a good amount of Miike’s work) could use some trimming down from its two-hours-plus running time, it sustains interest thanks to having Minami serve as audience surrogate throughout, and due to the sheer what-the-hell-is-he-thinking? audaciousness of Miike’s imagination. From the early scenes, he drops odd details into the margins, and sustains a fever-dream mood that can (and already has) been compared to David Lynch. The just-when-you-thought-you’ve-seen-everything climax, however, feels like David Cronenberg at his most unbridled.
But enough with comparisons; Miike is clearly unique even in the wild world of Asian genre cinema, if only because he leaps among genres so often (sometimes within the same film). Even if, like me, you run hot and cold on his work, he scores enough to pique curiosity about what he’ll come up with next. More like Gozu, please!
