Ju-On: The Grudge (2002) 
Whilst by no means a favourite, I have some fond memories of watching Ju-on, which was at a time just prior to the point where the sub-genre started to become oversaturated and its popularity seeped over into western cultures fuelling the inevitable ‘remake’ machine.
The main reason for me returning to this one was as an anti-thesis to the previous night’s Ring remake, which although not as terrible as I’d found it the first time around, was a little hollow and stale in terms of conveying the subject matter in such a way where it pales to the thrills and chills of the original. Ju-on was therefore administered as a kind of antidote to restore balance to my cinematic world whilst at the same time feeding the pangs for some atmospheric, nuanced, Asian horror I’d been left hungry for whilst viewing The Ring…so I suppose in a lot of ways I have Verbinski’s remake to thank for re-watching this one and the resultant satiation of my hunger.
Ju-on is a cinematic puzzle in essence, and a creep-tastic one at that with some tense chilling set-pieces peppered throughout and enhanced by its segmented approach to storytelling. Whilst a little repetitive, I feel that this is sort of the point in many ways, with the vengeful spirits inhabiting the earthly plain in a repetitive cycle inflicting the pain of their past existence on others until their curse has been lifted.
70/100