#ju-on

And... I won't lie I did not like it.

I thought I would, there were some interesting elements but... I was just left halfway between indifferent and disappointed. I just don't like the series. It feels like it tried to recreate the type of logic and "supernatural system" that made the original Ju-On movies work, but failed to succeed. Now to what this failure is owned I cannot say - either it is because they relied too much on a second season that did not come, either because the writers were just not that good? It just feels... Not "bad" but unfinished, very raw (not in a good way, like a rough way) and at several points the characters have to act just very... I will almost say stupidly to get some scenes to work? In terms of haunting - in terms of IRL abuse however, they got it right. You know, the child-abuse scene and the rape scenes of the beginning, I am not calling that "stupid". But just standing there when a guy tries to stab the pregnant woman you're supposed to take care of, that's a bit stupid.

It was quite funny however because, despite being still very Japanese, you could see the Netflix brand on there. It is discreet, but when you know your Netflix shows and you pick up how they want their stories, you see the specific signs that tell you "Ah yes, Netflix is behind it".

The only thing I found interesting in this story was the angle of the curse/house (I saw people claim that the show put more of an emphasis on the house being a corrupted place than the ghosts being the embodiment of a curse, so I'll just refer to it as "the house") sparing people. "Why did it let me live?" "I am still healthy and fine". It is a very nice subversion/topic to touch upon for the Ju-On world given the specificity of the Ju-On story is its absolute nihilism and the unescapable nature of the curse. It is what made the movies stand out among other "haunted house" stories: the second you set even just a foot in the house, you're doomed, the curse touches anybody that simply happens to pass by, and that's how it spreads like an apocalyptic infection. (And this is why the original Ju-On movies quickly went for an "apocalyptic" angle)

But here you have the idea that authors and real estate agents are purposefully spared to help the house "live" through being bought again and being talked about - or as other people put it, to attract and lure in more people... An idea which I was actually "prepared" for by the constant dropping of IRL historical incidents. At first I wondered heavily about this - was it just the writers' heavy way of indicating the "historicity" of it? Was there some parallel about the fucked up disasters and gruesome horrors happening elsewhere in the world while the crimes of the house unfolded? Was it just Netflix's deep love for the True Crime genre and the glamorization of IRL horror peeking in?

I think it works however for the angle the writers went for: the idea of the documentation and mediatization of crimes, disasters, "horror cases", it sort of echoes the way the author or the real estate agents are "spared" to be "used", to "document" the house... Unfortunately the actual "drop" of this reveal is just one, fragmentary line in the last episode and it feels really like... short and, again, unfinished. I do see that they were trying for this specific thing in vintage Japanese "classic horror", this shortness, simplicity, "épuré" as we say in French, but here they did it too much and it feels like broken bones organized together as a pseudo-skeleton rather than an actual skeleton well-put together with connected joints.