DVD 76 mins IMDB 5.8

In Collection
#263

Horror, Thriller

Yuuko Daike	Kyôko Suzuki
Makoto Ashikawa	Tatsuya Suzuki
Kahori Fujii	Yoshimi Kitada
Yûrei Yanagi	Shunsuke Kobayashi
Tomohiro Kaku	Nobuyuki Suzuki
Takako Fuji	Kayako Saeki
Ryôta Koyama	Toshio Saeki
Mayuko Saitô	Clerk
Dankan	Deliveryman
Denden	Yoshikawa, Police Detective
Yûko Daike
Kaori Fujii
Mayuko Saito
Kei Horie

Director	Takashi Shimizu; Shimizu Takashi
Producer	Takashige Ichise; Kazuo Katô; Taka Ichise
Writer	Takashi Shimizu; Shimizu Takashi

Takashi Shimizu's inexhaustible obsession with the Ju-on franchise finds a creepy outlet in Ju-on 2, which by most accounts is actually the fourth Japanese feature in the bunch. It returns to the style and structure that made Ju-on: The Grudge such an unnerving experience: the child demon with the blue face, the clicking/croaking that accompanies the appearances of the female ghost, the chockablock chronology that treats each haunting as a jigsaw piece to fit together into the whole. The plot follows an actress (Noriko Sakai), known as the "horror queen" of movies, as she deals with the repercussions of a car accident in which she loses her pregnancy. Or does she? Pregnant or not, the idea of going with a small film crew to the very haunted house where the unpleasantness of the original took place is probably not a healthy idea. Some of the scares still work just fine if you're watching this movie with the lights out, but the feeling of discovery, in the wake of the original Ju-on, the Ring films, and the Hollywood sequels, has definitely worn off by now. Thus the unshakable feeling that Shimizu is going through the paces with this one, rather than expanding on a pretty nifty original idea. --Robert Horton