Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Ploydsge just watch it!

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Red-Barracuda There is a house in Tokyo where every visitor ends up dead. A child and a mother live there. Both are ghosts. Their presence stems from a traumatic event in the house's past. The story follows a variety of characters that enter this house.The film is structured into a series of short vignettes. We follow different people who encounter the horror of the mysterious house. To be honest, the plot only barely makes any sense. It seems to be no more than really an excuse to string together a number of scary moments. This is excusable on the grounds that this is a genuinely unsettling film. It's unnerving in that way that the best Japanese ghost movies are. The cultural difference between east and west means that these movies come at us in ways we can't predict as easily. The Grudge, like Ring, is no different in this respect and its scare factor stems quite a bit from this unknown quality. There is a constant atmosphere of dread in this one.If it perhaps had a little more coherence it would have the potential to reach the top bracket of horror. As it is, it works as an exercise in inventively scary Japanese horror moments. For me this is a perfectly acceptable compensation, as it's quite rare for any film to scare you in the way that this one sometimes does. So with that in mind, it's quite obvious that this movie has achieved something impressive.

ciccarellib I feel like this movie had so much going for it, yet failed due to a lack of drive. The ghosts in this movie are very chilling and some of the scenes are filled with great suspense, but the lackluster plot unfortunately did not captivate me. It almost seemed as though I watched a few 10 minute films rather than a movie. What I found also disappointing were the lack of ingenuity past the first showing of the ghosts. The main spirit with the notorious vocal fry must have came down the stairs the same exact way 3 times, while the little boy simply hides in corners to make you jump. Don't get me wrong, it's scary...for the first few times. By the second half it starts to get old, along with the lack of plot driving it in any direction. It simply doesn't evolve in any substantial way. I really tried to enjoy this movie, however it was a letdown for me.

BA_Harrison At some of my kid's birthday parties there have been twenty or thirty children running around in poorly applied body/face paint and I've not once been driven hysterical with fear. And there have got to be at least thirty phones at the office where I work—twice that amount if you include mobiles—but I've never filled my pants when they've rung (thank heavens!).If, like me, you are not in the least bit perturbed by small, pale boys with black paint around their eyes or a telephone's ring-tone, then don't be surprised if you find Ju-on: The Grudge more than just a little disappointing. Frights are limited to the aforementioned phone-calls and the little lad popping up unexpectedly, plus the occasional appearance of his equally un-scary mother who croaks like a frog whilst crawling very slowly downstairs on her belly.Perhaps, to a Japanese person well versed in the Ju-on legend, all this might seem like seriously scary stuff, but I was bored rigid, with matters made even more irksome by the film's excruciatingly slow pace and a pointless fractured time-line that ensured maximum confusion. Quite what Sam Raimi saw in this to make him want to fund a remake I'll never know...

Scott Baldwin (Meven_Stoffat) Yeah. True horror is an overrated/over-hyped Japanese flick in which a naked little boy covered in talcum powder runs around a house and his true moment of terror is when he bulges his eyes and makes a very loud "Mroooooooooooowwww!!!!!!" sound effect. Oh my god, it was so scary, I had a heart attack and had to be rushed to the hospital for a heart transplant.OK let's be serious now. I, like many and their dog, saw this before its American counterpart was released. I was hoping I was going to be in for a good ghost story, when instead I was in for a movie about people being scared by the aforementioned naked talcum powder drenched kid and some girl with bad hair who makes some belching noise to threaten her victims. Who'd have known people were so easily scared?There isn't much of a plot to speak of, except people go in a house and die by these two "ghosts". There was one scary part, and that was when the woman got pulled under the sheets, but that was done way better (and not so cheaply) in its American remake. The film's atmosphere sucks too- why is everything so light??? The American remake is an improvement as you can see they achieved the scares the original didn't. Way better creepy/brooding atmosphere, more convincing ghost story, etc. Save your money on this dreck.