Word: ju-on
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...growth industry, Ichise is ramping up production. In October the 43-year-old producer released two new films in Japan: Infection (featuring a haunted hospital) and Premonition (about a newspaper that describes grisly events before they happen). Meanwhile, The Grudge?Ichise's Hollywood remake of his 2002 hit Ju-on?topped the U.S. box office when it was released a month ago. "All I have to do is mention that I want to make another movie and studios line up to buy the rights," he gloats...
...Ichise can take much of the credit for this breakthrough. Returning to Japan in 1997 after a stint in Hollywood, he discovered a clique of talented young directors, including Ringu's Hideo Nakata and Ju-on's Takashi Shimizu, absorbed with making straight-to-video ghost stories. Working with budgets of about $10,000 per one-hour segment forced Asian horror's avant-gardists to rely on suspense instead of special effects. "With horror, bigger budgets don't necessarily mean better movies," says Ichise. "This group was making terrifying stuff on a shoestring. The Asian horror-movie boom that everybody...
...Psychological or atmospheric horror is what's attracting audiences these days," says Roy Lee, the Korean American who sold The Ring and Ju-on to Hollywood. It attracts producers too, since atmospherics cost less than computer legerdemain. But you don't have to be Japanese to scare people smartly. You need only a potent idea and $200,000. That was the budget for Open Water, based on the true story of an American couple who were left behind on Australia's Great Barrier Reef by a scuba boat...
...sharpest post-Ring cycle is Ju-on, two features on video and two on film written and directed by Takashi Shimizu. They detail the mischief that awaits anyone entering a house haunted by the ghosts of a man, his murdered wife and his son Toshio. The Ju-on series is a superbly orchestrated symphony of fear. A girl crawls under bedsheets to escape the wraiths and feels a tug on her leg; she lifts the covers to see a grimacing ghoul, climbing closer...
Hollywood studios often remake foreign films but rarely with the original directors. Yet Nakata is directing The Ring 2 and Shimizu is remaking Ju-on (as The Grudge). They may well be the first Japanese directors to make major studio films in America. Another Nakata film--Dark Water, his best--is being remade by Walter Salles, with Jennifer Connelly as a mother who gets traumatized and very wet in a haunted apartment building...