Word: ju
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Village) when you've been told that monsters lurk there. Or a dip in the ocean (in the low-budget thriller Open Water) when you're left stranded as shark bait. Try to wash out that feeling of dread by shampooing your hair (in the Japanese spookathon Ju-on: The Grudge). You begin to rub in the shampoo--and for a moment you feel a third hand, corpse cold, massaging your scalp...
Just now, grown-up horror is frightfully chic. The Village, which Shyamalan describes as "a Grimm fairy tale--Little Red Riding Hood, but an adult, dark version of it," creeps into theaters this week, followed by Open Water. Ju-on has opened in New York City and Los Angeles and spreads to a dozen cities next month. Soon we'll see an assault of Hollywood remakes of Japanese horror films. The Ring 2, a sequel to the 2002 Naomi Watts thriller that grossed $230 million worldwide, is being directed by Hideo Nakata, who helmed the original Japanese film version...
...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...