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Kitsa Kitsa is offline
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Old Oct 18th, 2013, 09:01 PM       
Ju-On: White Ghost/Black Ghost.

I'd been putting it off because I have such a love-hate relationship with Takashi Shimizu movies. The Proto-Ju-Ons were borderline scary. The V-Cinema Ju-Ons were scary, at least for a while, before Takako Fuji quit. The American Grudge movies were absolute horrendous bullshit. So I was a little apprehensive about the tenth anniversary rehash of the entire ponderous thing. It sat in my Netflix queue forever because I couldn't bring myself to watch one more fucking slog through the whole deal. Yesterday, though, I was feeling very blah and what the hell, so here goes.

Pros:
Very little rehash of the Saeki murders. It was hinted-at as being the same house, but I don't know that it was. A wadded-up portrait of the Saeki family was discovered in the kitchen and that about covered it.

White Ghost and Black Ghost were short, standalone movies, similar in theme, both conceived by Shimizu but directed by two different people. They were nonsequential, and headed with the names of different players in the drama, which is pretty much how these films go. If you had no trouble with the Ju-On movies, you'll fall right in step with this.

There's a staircase, and no one crawls down it croaking.

There are some genuine spooky moments and some genuine jump scares, along with some genuinely unsettling shit.

Two Toshio cameos. He doesn't meow in either one.


Cons:

Grandma with a basketball? REALLY?

THAT INFERNAL FUCKING CROAKING

In Black Ghost, there are a lot of ghost-appearance scares that you would completely miss if she hadn't been making The Takashi Shimizu Ghost Noise (tm). This is because the film was shot in a very dim palette and the translation to TV makes it even dimmer. Sometimes you think you can make out the whites of their eyes. Sort of.

Some hideous CGI, but could have been on purpose.

Blatant Tomie ripoffs, especially in Black Ghost.

So, I'm not entirely regretting watching it, but I didn't completely enjoy it either.

Last edited by Kitsa : Oct 18th, 2013 at 09:54 PM.
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