Ju-on: The Grudge 2 Review (2003) Worth Watching?

It's about a Japanese actress who catches The Grudge curse after filming a show in the cursed Grudge house.

Ju-on: The Grudge 2 was directed by Takashi Shimizu (who also directed Innocent Curse and Flight 7500) and stars Noriko Sakai (from Premonition), Kei Horie (from The Suicide Manual) and Yui Ichikawa (from Ju-on: The Grudge).

Ju-on: The Grudge 2 is the 4th part of an 8 part Ju-on series and the 2nd part of a 6 part Grudge series. This sequel picks up about a year after the original Ju-on: The Grudge leaves off. The house that created The Grudge curse is abandoned and known all over Japan for being haunted. Because of this, a TV show is filmed there to exploit the curse for cash, which of course opens up everybody involved to catching the curse. Ju-on 2 follows a famous actress and her fiance as they try to escape from the wrath of Kayako (the grudge chick) and Toshio (the cat kid).

Ju-on 2 starts off fast, with the cat kid is killin' fools in the first 5 minutes. This was an exciting start that had me strapped in for a wild sequel. But unfortunately everything slowed down to a crawl after the opening scene. The pacing was off throughout the entire runtime and it was obvious the movie was only created to give people more of what you saw in the original. I know that's the point of sequels, to give fans more of what they want to see, but this one felt more extra footage, like the bonus features of a Blu-ray all clipped together.

This sequel was also divided into chapters just like the original, which means you basically get a series of short films that all show the full cycle of the grudge curse several times. This means you get to see a group of people visiting the house, catching the curse and being chased around by the grudge chick and the cat kid until they're eventually killed, over and over and over. This would be fine on it's own, but this sequel was rushed and released a mere year after the original. And I happened to watch it the very next day which means that between the original and this sequel I basically watched the same story two dozen times. Needless to say, this starts to feel repetitive real fast.

But to be fair, I wasn't the intended audience for this movie. All the Ju-on movies were made for Japanese fans who are big into manga's that are often told in the same short story chapter format. And although this sequel serves only to offer more of the same, it does weave in some extra supernatural elements, mixes up the timeline and taps into the story of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (a demon is being reborn through someone) as a way of continuing the story.

Worth Watching?

Meh, I honestly don't think so. This sequel is alright, for being a low budget B-movie-ish J-horror reboot, but it definitely doesn't pack the punch of the first.

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