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I go through phases where I won’t watch horror movies for a long time and then I will go a bit crazy and rent out a ton of them. I’m on the tail end of another (bloody) spurt of horror movie viewing, so I figured that I would share some quick reviews with you.

I’m a big fan of Japanese horror movies. I don’t know what it is about these films, but they scare the hell out me, which is the point. Japanese horror films tend to be more creepy that gory. They usually involve ghosts and use darkness effectively. There have been a lot of remakes of Japanese horror movies lately. The Ring, The Grudge and Pulse are all examples of remakes. I thought that the American versions of these films, especially the Ring, were pretty good. I have yet to see the American version of Pulse, but most reviews panned it.

There are a few things about the Japanese movies that will turn mainstream audiences off. First, the subtitles can be questionable and sometimes incoherent. I was watching The Grudge 2 last night and the subtitles would use a character first name instead the word, “you”. For instance: “Koyoko seems very nervous”. Instead of, “You seem very nervous.”

Another thing, that seems to be like a badge of honor in Japanese horror movies, is to have an incoherent ending. Almost every movie, with the exception of the Ringu (The Ring), had an ending that made no sense. If you want your movies to wrap up nicely, avoid these movies at all cost.

Ju-On: The Grudge (5 out of 5): Ju-On is the original version of the Sara Michelle Gellar film, The Grudge. This movie is by far the scariest and best horror movie that I have seen in a long time. I watched it in broad daylight and it still scared the hell out of me. The subtitles in this one are good but the plot is a bit hard to follow because the events occur out of sequence ala Pulp Fiction. It takes some attention to understand what is going on but its worth it in the end because it was so damned scary. I was trying to pinpoint why the ghost woman in this movie is so scary. I think I narrowed it down to the fact that her facial expression always remains the same, even when she is stalking the characters. Her expression is just…well…dead.

Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (3.5 out of 5): This movie was even harder to follow than the first one. The scares in this movie range from silly to outright terrifying. The first half hour of the film was slow and hard to follow, but once it picked up, it was relentless. The ending made no sense and hurt the overall impact of the movie. Still, I enjoyed it. There are few scenes where, if you pay attention, you will see the ghosts hiding in the shadows while the characters converse. (Pictured Above: Grudge Girl)
Pray (2 out of 5 stars): This movie started off with a great premise; a young man and woman kidnap a little girl in the hopes to collect a big ransom. When the call the girl’s parents, the mother tells them that “they can’t possibly have their daughter, because she has been dead for a year”. And so begins the promising Pray. Unfortunately, the movie goes downhill slowly. The writers apparently thought that the main storyline with the little girl wasn’t enough so they threw in another ghost girl similar to the ghost from The Ring. This extra ghost is added for no other reason than to attract fans of other (better) movies. The whole movie ends with a complete head scratcher (of course).

Marebito (4 out of 5 stars): One of the better horror movies that I’ve seen in a while that, sadly, falls into that “I can’t really recommend to anyone since it’s so bizarre”. Marebito is about a lonely news camera man obsessed with fear. He want to feel pure terror. One day, he captures a man committing suicide down in the subway below Tokyo. Before the man kills himself, his face twists with terror. The camera man is convinced that the man saw something before he died. The camera man returns to the subway and searches until he finds a set of caverns that lead to a strange and empty underworld under the city. While exploring, he finds a naked woman chained inside a cave. He takes her home and finds that she can not speak and acts more like an animal than a human. He also finds that she has a taste for human blood. This movie stuck with me for a few days after I watched it. Nothing was as it seemed in this movie. There were a lot of clues as to what was really going on in the movie. I still don’t know if I have it figured out. Did the camera man really find Hell? or was the movie merely a chronicle of lonely man’s descent into madness? Like I said, great movie…too bad I can’t recommend it to anyone other than the hardcore horror fan. Ben Solah would like this one. (Pictured Above: Scary Elevator Girl).

Satan’s Playground (0 out of 5 stars): I should have known better. Whenever I read glowering reviews of straight-to-DVD release from a horror site, it always turns out to be a stinker. The reason that this movie caught my eye, was that it starred actors and actress from some very famous horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead and Sleepaway Camp. Satan’s Playground is the only American movie of the bunch and boy was it a stinker. The movie is about a family whose car breaks down while travelling through the New Jersey Pine Barrens (home of the fabled Jersey Devil). The Jersey Devil lurks in the woods but the $1.50 budget that this movie was made on, did not allow the director to show him to us. So basically, you have a movie about the Jersey Devil but no Jersey Devil. Oh, did I mention that his family lives in the woods and are the same crazy bunch of rejects found in a dozen better movies? One by the one, the characters leave the broken down car and are killed by the family. Who cares? I still don’t know why this movie got so many positive reviews. It was so bad, that it doesn’t even fall into the, “It’s so bad, it’s good” category. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!