Watch Ju-rei: The Uncanny For Free

To me, this movie is perfection.

Powerful

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

*****************Slight Spoilers****************Ju-Rei: You said review to come. Just a few facts about this movie. It isn't exactly unique and can get boring at times but one thing about this movie that is different is that it plays backwards from chapter 16 recceding to chapter 1. It's not the best shot movie and it seems low budget so don't expect fantastic special effects but it was quite a interesting movie. It starts out with 4 girls practicing their dance moves and as one of the girls begins to leave a dark mysterious figure appears infront of her and all of the other girls run away. The whole movie is about some Myth or legend that explains about a dark figure that comes and gets you and anyone that comes in contact with the person that has encountered that dark figure will also meet the dark demise. They don't explain the whole story behind the myth but it was a slightly entertaining film that was rather mishandled.3 out of 5 Stars - Not For everyone but entertaining enough to attract some.

I'm going to tell you right now this review will have spoilers, such as they are, from the outset. If you don't want to know then stop reading now.You've been warned.Told in "reverse order" Ju-Rei tells the tale of a series of ghostly murders in reverse. Its a linear version of the classic tale "Le Ronde" where we see the story by following a different character from scene to scene until we end up back at the start. That doesn't quite happen, but the premise is the same, we follow the story backwards through the ghosts, who are alive in the "next" story. Its a clever idea but one that doesn't really work since by the third "chapter" you've figured out whats going on and all suspense is lost. It might have worked if there had been some variation, but there is none until the final prologue where the story is told in a slightly different way. Before that however its the same basic story of a lone person at night investigating weird noises that ultimately lead them into the hands of the ghosts told multiple times.Actually the movie isn't that bad, its creepy for the first two or three stories as we wait for something to happen, but nothing does, or nothing different does. Its the total lack of variation that makes this hard to sit through. Worse, not only does the movie repeat itself, it repeats other, better, movies. The ghosts are almost the exact same sort of ghosts as in Ju-on(The Grudge) down to the black eyes and weird croaking sounds. How can one not see them and moan out load "Rip off!" In the end I can't recommend this to anyone wanting a really good, really scary movie. Sure the film starts off strong but by the third variation, about 15 minutes in, it all collapses down on itself. No one should be asked to pay money for a movie thats effectively over in one fifth of its running time. Of course if you ever run across this on cable or some other way where you don't have to pay for it, I'd try it if you want to see a somewhat interesting misfire, otherwise avoid it.

Chronically unoriginal and derivative Japanese horror could practically be guilty of plagiarism.Ju-Rei (The Uncanny) is yet another in the conveyor belt of Oriental horror movies which lept on the Ring bandwagon of 1998. The vast majority of them have benefited from the fact that Eastern horror is still a relative unknown here in the west, and the tricks used in Asian film-making are still fairly new here too.Indeed, fairly similar films like Dark Water and The Grudge have been blessed by the fact that they're still something of a novelty in this part of the word, because otherwise we'd see right through them much in the same way that teen slasher after teen slasher from Hollywood gets tiresome and repetitive.However, there comes a time when even *novelty* becomes contrived, and Ju-Rei is a superb illustration of this.The Uncanny (God knows what the name means) is a ghost story (Surprise surprise) where a shadowy female figure (*feigned shock*) appears and people die as a result (Where have we seen *that* before?).So, no prizes for a fresh and interesting story line. However, the one direction the plot has taken to elevate it above its peers is the story's told in reverse. We start at Chapter 10, then work our way back to 1. Sure, Memento did this already, but nonetheless it's new for Japanese horror, to my knowledge.The direction, though, lets this film down big time. Sure, the plot and narrative are totally unoriginal, but this could be countered by decent direction. Unfortunately, the mechanics of the movie are simply dire. Too often scenes' camera work is forcing the viewer, as opposed to the viewer feeling free. Good direction is subtle and when a scare or chill is threatening, it doesn't force you into submission. This should be a voluntary response, meaning you'll get more out of the upcoming shock. Add to this the number of times where something is laboured at a snail's pace, or a camera shot is held for a stupidly long period of time and you begin to get the feeling this one's being directed by an amateur.Indeed, the budget appears to be substantially low, with some pretty poor attempts at acting compounding it. Being an English speaker I cannot obviously detect the subtlety of Japanese, but I can tell that the portrayals are universally struggled and decidedly unnatural.As for the shocks, well there is one moment which I actually failed to see coming, so I got a little kick out of it, but otherwise this movie was a blatant copy of everything else which has been before.This was a Japanese horror by the numbers.Avoidable.

There is a curse affecting all who come into contact with it. It's spread like a horrible disease that only requires contact with an affected person. If you have the curse, you can expect to die a terrible, horrific death. The problem is that you may not know you've been cursed until it's too late and you see the black figure coming to get you.If you are a fan of horror and the very brief description sounds familiar, don't be surprised. Ju-rei exhibits very little in the way of originality. It's the best parts of Ju-on or The Grudge repeated over and over. The ghosts look the same, sound the same, move the same, and have the same motivations. Furthermore, within the movie there is also little originality. The movie is divided into ten chapters. Once you've seen two or three of the chapters, you can pretty well guess what's going to happen next. One chapter is almost the same as the next chapter. There nothing much to make one chapter distinguishable from the others. While I found the first couple of chapters fairly frightening, the repetitive nature of the movie really hurts any scares in the later chapters.The story is told backwards from chapter 10 to chapter 1. At first this seemed to be an interesting, unique way of telling a story. Trying to figure out who was who and how they came into contact with the curse was part of the fun of playing along. But, after a few chapters, it really didn't seem to matter much. Again, the lack of originality really hurt the movie.Another problem I had with the movie was the beginning and ending. Or, to put it in a better way, the lack of a beginning and the lack of an ending. The movie presents no resolution to the events in the movie. It just ends. Likewise, the movie does not present a clear starting point. It's as if the curse has always been there and we are just viewing part of it's progress. I felt very unsatisfied.