Ju-on: The Final Curse

Well, I can't claim to be much fan of the previous "Ju-On" movie, but I was given the chance to sit down and watch "Ju-On: Za Fainaru" (aka "Ju-On: The Final Curse") shortly after watching the predecessor.

But let me say right away that I did so with very little expectations to this 2015 movie, given the fact that the 2014 "Ju-On: Owari No Hajimari" (aka "Ju-on: The Beginning of the End") was a rather terrible movie in terms of storyline and scared.

Turns out that the 2015 movie was exactly as horrible. Well, the good thing about "Ju-On: The Final Curse" is that it is a direct continuation of the 2014 movie. The bad thing, well the entire movie essentially.

There is just nothing scary about a small boy (Toshio) with a horrible hair cut and his body painted white, wearing large underwear and carrying a cat whilst also sounding like a cat, and having his so-called mother turn up and crawl around on the floor awkwardly while having her eyes crossed and her mouth while opened, making the sounds of a dying croaking frog. Actually it was more hilarious than it was scary. Toshio is not a scary entity by any means. And I have been referring to him as the "milk boy". I just can't take that character seriously.

I will say, however, that the acting in the movie was actually good, especially taking into consideration the limitations and restrictions the actors and actresses had in terms of script, storyline and characters.

The events in "Ju-On: The Final Curse" wasn't particularly interesting, and I do hope that this is in fact the final movie. I suppose you have to be a Japanese girl in order to find "Ju-On: The Final Curse" scary.

After few installments of Ju-on franchise, the last two movies appeared as a reboot, which is unfortunately awful. When I started to understand the entire franchise, the last two movies came with new things that confusing; like Toshio's origin. For me, Ju-On franchise is stopped in Black Ghost.

I watched this movie last night and I have finally seen the entire Ju-on franchise. It is without a doubt the scariest horror franchise there is. There are 11 movies in total, 8 Japanese ones and 3 American ones. A 12th movie in 4D, which is a cross-over with the famous Ringu franchise, is set to be released in July in Japan.

As far as the Ju-on storyline goes, this is the first sequel to the Ju-on reboot from 2014 and it is a quite a good effort, if you look past the repetitive nature of the movies. What is clear about this movie from the first few minutes of the movie, is that this movie has a lot of jump scares as opposed to its Japanese predecessors. It has almost completely abandoned its reliance on atmosphere, but it's still there to be found. However, it doesn't exploit these moments like Western cinema does, which is a good thing.

Due to the fact that there have been so many Ju-on movies, I didn't think this movie was as scary or frightening as the other movies were. There is something called over-exposure which leads to desensitization. The scares were pretty good in this but none of them got to me, unfortunately.

Definitely avoid the trailer if possible, as a part of it shows you the last seconds of the movie. Had this not happened, the ending would've been more terrifying.

Hopefully Kayako Vs Sadako will be filled with plenty of atmosphere like the previous Ju-on movies were instead of having to rely on jump scares.

There's only so many times a franchise can spam little boy in underwear or creepy crawling girl and still be effectively horrifying. For Ju-on that expiration date has passed a couple of movies ago. Final Curse offers so little novelty, and logic for that matter, it becomes a predictable movie that's more annoying with blaring jump scares than actually delivering terror.

It introduces many perspectives, more than half a dozen in total. What starts with Mai trying to find her sister who was lost from previous movie, escalates into lingering haunting for her and anyone even remotely close to the tragedy. This includes unsuspecting neighbor and school friend of the strange boy's cousin. It's really reaching for victims at this point, but having large cast doesn't mean more dread.

Main issue is these people don't act naturally. They would stare or freeze at the most unfortunate moment instead of running, the ghost spends most of the movie crawling for god's sake. More often than not they would literally walk into the haunting without any plan and scream in surprise when meeting expected fate.

Not that the horror is done decently, the use of this pale boy has become silly. Audience should know the pattern already, yet the movie keeps churning the same things, even resorting to increase the volume and literally screaming in one's face. A couple of the scenes might work, like the little girl in hospital, but eventually it returns to old gimmick again.

It's an exhausting viewing, what little suspense it has it buried within clumsy effect and outdated forced jump scare.

I truly wished this would be the first ju on movie I watched because it would scare me the entire hour and a half. But damn, because I watched all of them I see it is just a remake of the previews ones. Honestly, nothing really new, yeah the story isn't entirely the same but everything else is. I also did't get those famous goosebumps like with the first one. Come on Japan, try something new, this stuff has been done so many times, and yeah, you people put something very original on the screens so many years ago, try something new!

I really hope we all will something original again from our Japanese friends because I know they can!