Ju-On: Origins was a really quick binge for me. The Grudge series has grown to be one of my favorites in all of horror despite some shortcomings beyond the initial drops. The Netflix series took the typical Grudge formula and threw in a bit of tweaking that's helped it to become one of the best iterations of the series imo.
What usually works for the Grudge is that once someone enters the house, their death is inevitable with no safe space. The curse can get people at any point, day or night; private place or public...and so even if a character is getting close to answers, they might get stopped in their tracks at the damned library because this thing doesn't play. On top of that, the narrative is always disjointed. So the story skips around and where a linear storyline is like connecting dots, you've got a jigsaw puzzle on your hands. The combination makes it a disorienting ride that's tense from start to finish...when it's good.
The problem with the formula is that every sequel was just another repetition. Once you get past the sequencing, it's a lot more predictable...person enters haunted location and encounters ghost; person leaves haunted location; ghost follows person and eventually kills them. All of this digression is to say that the new Grudge series has added ambiguity to tweak the recipe and make it feel unique again.
What I mean by that is that while the ghosts make plenty of appearances, the worst violence comes from living people haunted by the ghosts. The show goes to great lengths to show the types of heinous behavior that can spawn a vengeful spirit to follow a person the rest of their days. Every Grudge movie is about trauma sparking a chain reaction but in this series, every domino comes with a real life moment of violence attached rather than something we can simply blame on the ghosts. The curse feels more internalized and psychological than it ever has before.
But I gotta add a caveat now...the violence gets gratuitous at times. It's all a blur now but I'd be surprised if you couldn't find a trigger warning to attach to every single episode. There's rape, suicide, murder, violence against women and children...and it's all shown just a little more than I felt was necessary (actually a lot more in the fourth episode specifically). For as much as the injection of ambiguity works to refresh the formula a bit, it also forces us to sit through some really brutal imagery point blank.
The other tweak to the formula is that there's a feeling that having episodes instead of one run time gives us less predictable deaths. We've been taught to assume that when someone enters the house, they'll end up dead by the end of run time. But with episodes and seasons, a character's death isn't so easily timed. It's simple and more a result of the tv format than anything, but it helps a lot. I will admit though, I'm a bit annoyed at how this season ended.
Anyway, I love the original Grudge and Ju-On flicks. So consider me biased, but I really enjoyed this one. The violence can be gratuitous at points but I could say that about plenty of other shows and movies (Slasher on Netflix for example). It's a fresh take on the Grudge which has been needed for years and it's also refreshing to have some new horror to comb through.
I’ll keep my cash then. With the Firestick I can get everything on hbo for free. Only reason I subscribe to Netflix/Hulu/shudder is for the convenience. If HBO don’t wanna make it convenient for me then fukk em
