Curse: This curse comes from the deep resentment of the deceased. The place where the deceased died accumulated all her resentment. Those who come into contact with this curse will die, giving rise to a new curse.
As the millennium approaches, eschatology is on the rise, and people's fears become more real than ever.
Under the atmosphere, Asian horror films ushered in a golden age.
Today, 20 years later, when people's lives have been almost blurred into a digital survival due to scientific and technological progress, and the biggest daily horror has changed into a mobile phone without battery and no wifi, a classic Japanese horror film has once again appeared on the screen, it is "The Grudge".
Curse
In 2020, Netflix decided to redesign the classic horror film into a 6-episode TV series, Cursed House.
posters
Japanese dinosaurs are excellent, but Europe and the United States are not regions that are not good at shooting horror films.
Since the 1980s, it has produced a series of works that combine art and horror: "The Shining", "The Wind Gust", "Rosemary's Baby", "Carrie the Witch", "Friday of the Thirteenth", "Moonlight Panic", etc., preferring to use violent and bloody plots to express horror.
Shining
The horror films in Asia, such as Japan, South Korea, and Thailand, pay more attention to atmosphere and psychology than those in Europe and the United States, such as "Sopranos", "Ghost Bells", "Midnight Murder Bells" and so on.
The sopranos talked
Despite the clear differences, Japanese fear has always been able to mobilize the nerves of European and American producers, and many works have been remade in buying versions, of which "The Grudge" is the most typical.
Curse poster
To understand everything, we have to go back to where the dream began, the source of horror - "Curse VideoTape Edition".
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the beginning of the myth</h1>
In 1972, Takashi Shimizu was born in Gunma Prefecture, Japan.
Shimizu Takashi
At the age of 10, he watched Spielberg's famous "ET"
The "weirdness" of this film about aliens gave him the idea of making a movie, but funny enough, he never imagined that he would become a famous horror director.
AND
When he first entered the film industry, Shimizu takashi practiced with horror short films. The prototype of his style and resentment is reflected in his early works "44444444444" and "The Corner".
In 1999, "The Grudge" was born.
At the time, it could only be broadcast on videotape and television, and now it seems that even the production is a little rough. But such a production fee is not very generous, and the horror film directed by a newcomer director has successfully become a nightmare in the hearts of countless people. Takashi Shimizu has since been labeled a "master of horror," and "The Grudge" unexpectedly forms a vast chain of works: movies, games, books, and continues to make it difficult for generations to sleep peacefully for the remaining decades.
So far, there are several works of curse that are generally recognized:
Curse VideoTape Edition 1
Curse videotape version 2
Grudge 1 (Movie Version 2002)
Grudge 2 (2003, movie version)
Grudge 1 (2004 US Version)
Curse of the Dead 2 (2006 US Version)
Curse: The White Old Woman (2009)
Curse: The Black Maiden (2009)
Curse: The Beginning of the End (2014)
Curse: The End (2015)
Curse: Cursed House (2020 series)
New Grudge (2020 US Version)
Although Takashi Shimizu personally participated in only "Grudge Video Version 1, 2", "Grudge 1, 2" and "Grudge American Version 1 and 2", this did not prevent the Grudge series from becoming the most successful horror film IP, and also brought out different forms of derivative series such as remake movies, serials and games around the world.
Curse game
The cultural barrier between The East and the West and the change of generations cannot stop the haunted house from continuing to shine on the screen, which is undoubtedly quite an intriguing thing.
You know, first of all, the viewing preferences of audiences of different generations are completely different.
Nowadays, there are not so many people who can calmly sit down and watch "Once Upon a Time in America".
After a day of attack in modern society, we prefer to watch popcorn blockbusters or sweet pets, costumes, and delay dramas, and it is no wonder that Scorsese angrily reprimanded the Reunion series for not being a real movie.
The current producer selection also reflects this.
Art films have almost no way out, pick ready-made IP, and please traffic has almost become an indispensable part of the "project highlights" in project planning.
To this day, an old horror film from 20 years ago has still been adapted, and it is very rare to have a high degree of discussion.
Of course, there are many people who do this, and some time ago, "Wind Gusts" was remade.
But for the sake of box office considerations, not only did "Fifty Shades of Grey" actress Dakota Johnson, powerful actor Tilda Swinton, popular actress Colo Moretz, the director was Luca Guadalino of "Please Call Me by Your Name".
Overcast wind gusts
The cast of Cass is already topical enough, and most of the "Curses" starred this time are newcomers, which can be said to be quite trusting of the appeal of the Curse IP.
In addition, the understanding of terror in the East and the West is also very different.
In an interview, Shimizu Takashi said that he had watched the famous work "The Exorcist" under the recommendation of foreign friends, but he fell asleep, which showed that the East and the West really belonged to a completely different system in the matter of terror.
Exorcist stills
In general, Europe and the United States prefer direct and even bloody horror performances, and the way of scaring is more brutal.
Curses contemporaries in the United States are setting off a wave of school battle royale horror films, such as Screams, Death is Coming, and I Know What You Did Last Summer, all of which have developed into series, and Curses are completely different from them.
Scream
Because phobic audiences in Asia are more afraid of that kind of "penetrating" horror.
A person is isolated in a dim daily scene, the wardrobe suddenly flashes a person's eyes, the elevator that breaks down when he returns from work, the lights in the toilet flicker, this ambiguous and blurry and everyday scene is easy to make the audience think of himself, to achieve the effect of a person lying in bed and recalling the plot.
Curse Stills
But "The Grudge", as a representative of "Japanese horror", can still break down cultural and temporal barriers and gain recognition around the world. According to the data, the world box office revenue of the US version of "Grudge" is as high as 187 million US dollars, and the cumulative box office revenue of the Us is 110 million US dollars; the international box office of the US version of "Grudge 2" is 39.14 million US dollars.
So, how did Shimizu Takashi's two original "Grudges" show and understand the "horror" thing, so that it became the most successful horror IP ever?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > conceptually centralized</h1>
One of the great features of The Grudge is its conceptual centralization.
Most horror films use event-centricity, that is, the creator's main intention is to convey a certain emotion by describing an event, telling a certain story, affirming or denying a certain value.
Genetic doom
For example, the previous word-of-mouth work "Hereditary Doom" depicts the collapse of various members of an American family to uncover the existence of a cult hidden behind family history.
Another example is "Invisible Man", which tells the story of a heroine getting rid of the ex-boyfriend of a scientist with a pathological desire to control, expressing the conflict and contradiction between people's hearts and technology in the post-technology era.
Invisible Man
But the whole center of "The Grudge" is the "Grudge" itself.
The rest is to amplify and deepen the sense of horror brought to the audience by this concept, and the experience of the characters and personality itself are not the most important.
For example, the core character of "The Grudge", Gaco, is a tragic character in itself.
Her childhood was very lonely, her parents were cold and had no friends, only a black cat accompanied her, but this black cat eventually died. She lost both of her parents in an accident and fell to the bottom of her life.
Kobayashi Sensei
It can be said that the only bright color and the most beautiful composition of Gaco's life is her classmate , Shunsuke Kobayashi. Kobayashi is Gaco's elementary school classmate and the only one who has ever given her warmth. Gaco has always had a crush on him, and has a notebook to record Kobayashi's activities, preferences, and her love for him.
notebook
But the two did not intersect more, and Kobayashi married someone else as an adult and became Toshio's teacher. Gakami also married Tsuyoshi Saburō and gave birth to a son, Toshio.
The good times did not last long, Tsuyoshi found out that he was suffering from oligospermia, and saw the notebook of Gaco's crush on Kobayashi, so he suspected that Toshio was not his own child, and in a fit of rage, he killed Gaco and Toshio, and all the pains of Ga-Coco's life converged into a powerful grudge at this moment, and a curse was formed.
It can be seen that Jia Coconut himself is a very storytelling character, but Shimizu Takashi explains this past in a very neutral and even cold way.
The most three-dimensional moment of The image of Gaco is not when she has a crush on Kobayashi, nor is it when she is abused by Zob, but when she incarnates as a ghost and performs a curse, which shows the creative concept of the director's character giving way.
Compared to other films, the characters in The Grudge themselves show little complexity. The meaning of their existence is to be killed, to make the audience panic.
In fact, horror films are not new to completing the story structure by creating concepts.
Another Japanese classic of the same period, "Midnight Bell", also had a similar treatment. The box of videos in the film is very symbolic, and anyone who sees it will die within seven days.
But unlike the grudge, the tape exists more like a clue than a center.
The heroine of "Midnight Bells" Asakawa watches the tape, and the focus of the film is obviously not to show the audience how she died, but to focus on how she discovered the tragedy behind the tape.
This is completely different from "The Grudge".
The videotape is more like an introduction, a medium, and the "curse" occupies an absolute center in the work.
All the characters and events are just footnotes to the curse, it is everywhere, and Gaco and Toshio are the embodiment of this resentment, acting as executors in the movie.
The death of each character is a re-emphasis on the concept of "curse", so that the audience never forgets its absoluteness and horror.
This kind of absolute exhaustion is difficult to forget, other films generally need to use plot or characters to make people impressed, while "Curse" ignores these traditional memory points, only through the continuous repetition of the concept of "curse" to make the sense of terror firmly parasitic in the viewer's brain, blurring the personality characteristics of the characters, and not allowing the audience's focus to diverge.
Just as a hand firmly pressed against your shoulder cuts off your way out of turning or turning your head, you are allowed to watch only the most terrifying and violent side of the whole killing.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > absolute BE</h1>
I believe that many people must still remember the end of the total annihilation of the curse.
The treatment of the total death of the characters is not common in mainstream movies, so the hopeless ending of "The Grudge" is very shocking to the audience.
Screaming heroine Sidney
Like screams and the cabin in the woods, which joked about the horror film industry, the average horror film must have a survivor.
Cabin in the woods Heroine
She was often a girl, often kind, and often survived to the end.
This survivor is also a witness and terminator of the horror, and emotionally usually experiences a change of fear-grief-anger-calm, and the audience follows her through the entire course of the event, during which she experiences thrilling and terrifying fear.
In the cabin in the woods, the image of an open blonde woman is displayed
And other victims often fall prey for a reason: too bad, too ostentatious, too stupid, or because the heavens are good reincarnation, in short, there is always a reason.
But "The Grudge" completely ignores cause and effect: the people who died tragically had to die only because they walked into the house.
This disregard for the characters and plot logic makes the work seem extremely strange, and the audience cannot predict the development of the plot at all, and can only watch people die one by one.
The all-dead ending is not only cruel and terrifying, but also creates a chilling feeling of "things are not over, the curse is still there, will it be you next", so that terror and uneasiness hang over the audience's head like the sword of Damocles.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > weird structure</h1>
The structure of The Grudge is intriguing, with a chapter-like structure and each chapter title being a name.
Chapters are independent of each other, and this practice of dividing content actually echoes the previously mentioned concept center and ignoring cause and effect.
Because the center of "Curse" is "Grudge", there is no need to question or challenge its characters and plot.
The curse is equivalent to the supreme program, the absolute will, and no one can escape. All people are trapped and doomed to be killed, and the work is just showing the "curse" itself.
Every character and family in the story is almost inorganic, and the meaning of existence is to scare the audience with their different tragic deaths to highlight the "curse".
Every time a name appears, it means that the killing is about to begin, and the next victim has arrived.
The audience is almost watching some kind of execution, this kind of alienation and powerlessness, as if any individual will is ultimately unable to resist the immense evil and suffering of others.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > anomalies in everyday life</h1>
An important reason why "The Grudge" has become a nightmare representative is that it is easy for the audience to empathize with its content.
In other words, the scenes and character settings of this work are too everyday.
As mentioned earlier, Takashi Shimizu said that many Asian audiences feel that the most terrifying moment is not when watching the movie, but when they come home from watching the movie and lying alone in bed to recall the plot.
The reason why this sense of horror is strong is because the viewer resonates with the content of the work, so he can't help but imagine the plot on the screen to himself. It may be hard for you to empathize with a vampire countess who happened in the 19th century, but you must have a hard time accepting that a female ghost suddenly popped out of your quilt.
So it is not difficult for us to find that the background of "Grudge" is very, very everyday, and the victim in "Grudge Video Version 1" is just a family who accidentally moved into the house with the home visiting teacher on the past timeline and the current timeline.
The curse soon appeared, and even the family visitors could not escape death.
Kobayashi, the teacher who visited the home, was killed in the room;
Kobayashi's wife, who was killed in her own home;
Yuki, who has come to look for his daughter, is leisurely listening to music in the room when he suddenly enters a world-like space and is killed;
Son, daughter, son's girlfriend, killed at school;
The mother was killed when she returned home.
It can be said that the occurrence of horrors is in the space that people are accustomed to, one second it is still freely carrying out the rhythm of life, and the next second the curse will appear to kill. The pauses, doubts and murders of the people in the play make it easy for the audience to think of their daily life, and associations will breed fear, resulting in a very terrifying retrospective recall.
Living room, bedroom, classroom, bathroom... We have nowhere to run.
It can be seen that the enduring of "The Grudge" is not without reason.
Weird, cruel, terrible, is how many people look at it. It is this infinite magnification and deepening of concepts, cold chapter titles, victims of compressed personality traits, and resentments that can never be resisted that make Grudge VideoTape Edition a nightmare classic.
Shimizu Takashi's techniques and concepts are very ingenious, and this absolutely illogical killing unfolding provides great creative freedom for the Curse series.
Curse: The House of Curses
Theoretically, regardless of age and status, as long as you enter the curse range, you will not be able to escape death.
Therefore, there are countless possibilities in the design of characters and plots, after all, the main play is how the characters are killed, and the characters do not need to think too much about each other.
The 2020 Netflix drama "Curse: Cursed House" makes full use of the concept of "curse", and the central idea is still that everyone who enters the house cannot escape the curse.
However, it is obvious that more original plots have been added, and the portrayal of the characters is slightly heavier than the original Japanese version, making the whole drama appear more mainstream and more acceptable to the audience, which is also a consideration made by the production team after combining the new situation.
In the eyes of the old audience, no matter how the times change, the resentment in the house may only increase, not decrease, and the shadow left by "The Grudge" is always waiting for the opportunity to come back.
Maybe again afraid of a man's room, a half-concealed derailment, a dark and long corridor, a bathroom with a tap on... But we are still involuntarily attracted by the curse, wanting to follow those people into the house, wondering what awaits us next.
Perhaps, this is the charm of resentment, but also the complexity of people.