Weekly visions - week 47, 2024

Ju-on: The Curse/呪怨 , written and directed by Takashi Shimizu, Japan, 2000 - ⭐⭐⭐½

When I watched Ju-on: The Grudge more than six months ago , I wondered whether I would have liked it more if I had known in advance that it was actually the third movie of the series, and I had watched the ‘saga’ in the right order. Now I know the answer is ‘yes’. Or, at least, I know I enjoyed the TV movie that launched horror icons Crawling Kayako and Pale Toshio a lot. Maybe that’s because I already had an idea of what to expect, maybe because the different sections actually build each other and don’t require knowledge of any previous event. So now I’m curious to rewatch the Japanese Grudge…

Ju-On: The Curse 2/呪怨2 ビデオ版 , written and directed by Takashi Shimizu, Japan, 2000 - ⭐⭐

…but only after going through the second chapter of the story, which gets two stars despite the fact that half of the film is copy-pasted from the first episode. Regardless of the releasing history, I wonder why modern home video versions don’t re-compose a single 90-minute film from these two: I think they would make a great whole bloody affair.

The Grudge , directed by Nicolas Pesce, co-written with Jeff Buhler, based on the original films by Takashi Shimizu, Canada/US, 2019 - ⭐½

Having just recognised that watching the third instalment in a series first is maybe not the best strategy, I proceeded to watch the fourth instalment of the American version of the same series, without having seen the first three. I’m pretty sure, though, that no previous episode could bring me to reassess this uninspired re-quel re-hashing of the original Toshio story with elements from several other films (there’s a lot of Ringu, there’s a hand that comes up in the shower like in the trailer from the Sarah Michelle Gellar one, I would say there’s a bit of Hill House, there’s that thing where a mother and a child have recurring conversations, always very handy when you have to be able to distinguish your kid from an impersonating demon). It’s a mystery how someone can assemble a cast including Andrea Riseborough, Demián Bichir, John Cho, Lin Shaye and Jacki Weaver and release such a bland film.

Tomie: Another Face/富江 アナザフェイス , directed by Toshirô Inomata, written by Shôtarô Oikawa based on Junji Ito’s manga, Japan, 1999 - ⭐½

The first Tomie film wasn’t flawless but it was intriguing. Perhaps this one is sticking too much to the stories in the original manga but the result is vastly underwhelming. An anthology of three episodes - per se is a deadly sin in my book -, it tries to portray different aspects of Tomie and to adopt different tones, but the character is mostly reduced to a pretty face (or two) with a saccharine voice, which doesn’t convey why men are so enraptured by her. The actress in the first film gave a more consistent mischievous portrayal that is missing here. I enjoyed the minute or two when Tomie basically plays Audrey from Twin Peaks (more about Twin Peaks later).

A Matter of Life and Death , written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, United Kingdom, 1946 - ⭐⭐⭐

Another addition to the shelf of “universally recognised masterpieces that I just don’t get”. I appreciate a few creative ideas (the way when time stops, sound also completely stops - it made me think more than once that my Apple TV was buffering; the slowly moving infinite staircase; the joke about technicolor), but I would have wanted something with much more philosophical engagement than ‘he must live because they fell madly in love just by hearing each other’s voices during a desperate phone call, and by the way that’s not nonsensical at all’. I didn’t get why fifteen minutes or so were spent debating the place of Britain and the US in the modern world, and I found the ‘doctor’ character insufferable. So… three stars and that’s more than enough.

Lake Mungo , written and directed by Joel Anderson, Australia, 2008 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

I loved Lake Mungo when the first time I watched it, in low-res streaming a year and a half ago, I loved it as much now after unwrapping a shiny Second Sight blu-ray. Ghost ‘photos’ always give me shivers, so watching this film meant I trembled from the opening to the end credits (with a brief pause in the middle). This second time, since I am also slowly rewatching Twin Peaks, I couldn’t help but notice how the story of the death of Alice Palmer, a teenage girl with many secrets, must have been inspired by that of Laura Palmer (it’s not very hidden, is it?); plus David Pledger, who plays Alice’s father, reminded me so much of Michael ‘Sheriff Truman’ Ontkean. The blu-ray includes a short conversation about the film between Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, and Second Sight couldn’t have given me a nicer surprise.