JU-ON: ORIGINS Season 1: An Unsettling, If Overstuffed, Old-School J-Horror

It’s been nearly twenty years since Takashi Shimizu made a splash with his bone-chilling J-horror franchise of Ju-On. What first started out as two short films and two home movies now has fully grown into one of the biggest franchises ever made, complete with a number of American remakes, a manga series, and even a Wii game. The latest addition to this popular franchise is a six-part series executive produced by Kazutaka Sakamoto and Toshinori Yamaguchi that will be released via Netflix on July 3rd.

Though the overall story remains the same, and it still also suffers from the same overstuffed plot and thankless characters that have been plaguing the franchise since the get-go, the show, luckily, still has enough to offer — thanks to director Sho Miyake‘s ability to capture the unsettling atmosphere often found in classic J-horror movies that most of the American remakes fail to encapsulate. And for a franchise that has been losing its momentum for quite some time, that should be enough to get you hooked.

The Never-Ending Curse

Written by Hiroshi Takahashi and Takashige Ichise, Ju-On: Origins begins with the introduction of a paranormal researcher named Yasuo Odajima (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa). When we first meet him, he’s currently helping a young actress, Haruka Honjo (Yuina Kuroshima), to investigate some strange noises that she’s been hearing for days in her apartment. Those noises aren’t exactly creepy or scary, they just sound like footsteps. But Odajima believes that something isn’t quite right. He deduces immediately that the noises come from a spirit that must’ve been brought by either Haruka or Tetsuya from someplace else, most likely a haunted house. And he is absolutely right.

During his visit to Tetsuya’s office, Odajima learns that a few days before the noises began to appear in the apartment, Tetsuya went to an open house where he encounters a terrifying female ghost. He decides to not tell Haruka about any of it because; first he wants the new house to be a surprise, and second he’s afraid that this whole ghost debacle will freak her out. But when he’s about to finally come clean, the never-ending curse has cast its spell first. Not only to Tetsuya and Haruka, but also to a number of other characters that will slip in and out throughout the show.

Like most of the movies from the franchise, Ju-On: Origins will feature several plot-lines focusing on different characters. There’s a tragic story of a high school student who gets tricked by her friends inside the cursed house; a husband who’s suspicious that his pregnant wife is cheating on him; and an investigation featuring the local detective and social worker. And all of these will overlap throughout six episodes in a classic Ju-On fashion: non-linear and has no depth, but not entirely incoherent when we’re looking at it from the bigger picture of the myth surrounding the cursed house.

Still, the show eventually suffers from this style of storytelling. By focusing on so many characters, but not giving them enough nuance, Ju-On: Origins prevents the audience to resonate with the struggles and dreadful horror that these characters are facing throughout the story. And as a result, what could’ve been an involving horror drama about a group of unfortunate people struggling to make sense of an unexplainable spiritual force, ends up very bloated, with uninteresting characters to guide us through these intricate mazes of Japanese folklore.

Despite all of those issues, however, all of the cast manage to bring their A-game to the show. Kuroshima and Arakawa make a perfect duo as two tenacious yet clueless people trying to stop the curse. Koki Isamura brilliantly displays the regret that his character feels in an arresting performance. But it is Ririka who steals most of the spotlight throughout six episodes. Her performance as Kiyomi is simply remarkable, showcasing fear, anxiety, and ferocity only with her eyes while doing some heavy-lifting that elevates her tragic but shallow story to another level.

Flawed But Well-Crafted

One other thing that makes me appreciate the show a little more despite its plenty of shortcomings is how well-crafted the horror element is. Not only does the dark green visual strengthen the story’s atmosphere of dread, but Miyake‘s direction will also keep the audience on their toes from start to finish. He excellently heightens the unpredictability of the central mystery inside the show by employing an effective amount of jump-scares, bloody and terrifying gore, and an unsettling tone that without a doubt will increase our anxiety throughout.

And that’s what in the end makes Ju-On: Origins still watchable. It doesn’t need to give us a compelling drama or character— though having it certainly wouldn’t hurt either — to make the show interesting. By simply marveling a wonderful craft of horror, the show is able to accomplish what most of the American remakes fail to do; capturing Shimizu‘s stylish and moody sense of old-school J-horror as seen in the two original versions of the franchise.

More than that, the show also manages to make good of its depiction of the cursed house as some kind of a metaphor of the cycle of violence. This might not be the ultimate goal that the writers want to achieve in the first place. But upon watching the show, it’s hard to not think of all the unfortunate events that befall the characters as a stand-in of a portrait of trauma that the victim of abuse can’t fully escape. If only the show intends to delve deep into this subject even more instead of overcomplicating its plot, no doubt that it would be twice better and more enthralling.

Final Thought

In the end, Ju-On: Origins may not reinvent the formula of the franchise that has gotten less engaging from time to time. But by focusing on the craft of the horror and the pervasive feeling of dread inside the myth of its cursed house, the show still has enough stuff to give the audience a terrifying nightmare. You just gotta experience the curse first.

What do you think of the show? Is it scarier than the latest movie remake? Let us know in the comments!

All six episodes of Ju-On: Origins will be available to stream on Netflix July 3rd.

Watch Ju-On: Origins