Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.
There is a stupid trend in American films where a successful foreign movie is created and then remade for an American audience. I understand remakes when there’s a time distance between them. There are plenty of remakes that are good, and some that are better than the original versions. But when the remake is just a couple of years after the original, frequently sanitized in some respect, and different mainly in that it’s in English rather than its original language, I wonder at the point. There are a few exceptions. The American remake of Ringu is almost as good as the original. The American remake of Ju-on is decent as well, but now having seen the original film from 2002, I have to admit that the remake really wasn’t necessary.
One of the more interesting aspects for me of Ju-on is that it represents a very serious shift in some respects in terms of the victims in horror movies. While I’m certain there are earlier examples of this, in Ju-on, the victims of the curse that the film explores are all entirely innocent. There is no one here who even remotely deserves what is going to happen to them, and there is no way to stop what is happening to them. That’s the point—sure there are innocent victims in previous films, but there was a way out for them. Or, they weren’t as innocent as we’d like—often simply privilege is enough to set someone up to be “worthy” of being attacked. Okay, sure there are some examples from the past--The Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave and the like, but our victims here are not merely minding their own business but are actively trying to assist the people who are cursed, and thus end up cursed themselves.
