Pretty young Yui (Nozomi Sasaki) has been promoted from
substitute teacher to full-time teacher.
During her first class, she notices, from the previous teacher’s roll
book, that a particular student, Toshio (Kai Kobayashi), has been absent for
the past seven days. Scared of
overstepping her bounds, Yui consults the principal and believes a home visit
to Toshio is in order. Her principal
reluctantly agrees and tells Yui that her predecessor has recently died. With trepidation, Yui visits the home of
Toshio and encounters only the young boy’s mother, Kayako Saeki (Misaki
Saisho), who reveals that her son and husband are not at home. Yui visits an upstairs room in the house and
she notices a closet completely taped shut at its cracks (a la the red tape in Kairo (Pulse) (2001)). The mother’s
creepy behavior and the taped-up closet forces Yui to flee from the home. She begins to suffer hallucinations while
teaching and having extremely vivid nightmares.
Her boyfriend, Naoto (Shȏ Aoyagi), fears for the health and sanity of
Yui and begins an investigation of the Saeki home and its mysterious history.
Like the original Ju-on,
Ju-on:
The Beginning of the End alternates between different periods in
time, all involving doings at the Saeki home:
the opening scene of the film, rendered hand-held/”found footage” style,
cryptically details the original event which may source the evil In the house;
the second time period involves Yui and Naoto in the present; and finally, the
last period detailed involves four high-school girls. One of the girls’ sister is a real-estate
agent and is having trouble renting the home, because of its haunted
reputation. Curious of this reputation,
the girls visit the house, and each leaves the house to subsequently be
overcome with paranoia and fear of a little ghost boy. Quite a bit of time is devoted to episodes involving
the high-school girls, and they are pretty weak, almost retreads of familiar
J-cinema scare tactics. It is extremely
anti-climactic when it is revealed how this storyline relates to the present
one involving Yui and Naoto. Too much
thought was put into this technique by Ochiai and Ichise. Shimizu used this technique in the original Ju-on simply: he showed three families occupying the house
at different times with little exposition detailing when each occupied. He used this technique for a disorienting
effect and was highly successful.
There are a couple of creepy moments in Ju-on: The Beginning of the End,
but they are strongly outweighed by the myriad missed opportunities and boring,
slow bits which had me grabbing for my smartphone. The final act had a perfect set-up: Yui was going to visit the Saeki home for the
final time; and as she is standing at the gate, the front door slowly cracks
open beckoning her. The revelations of
the final act, like most of the film, are anti-climactic. The acting is average. Ochiai’s direction is perfunctory. His most interesting visual technique is
shooting almost the entire film in natural light: this is a bold palette to craft a
supernatural horror film; and had he been successful, it would have been a rare
feat. It did not happen today.
Takashi Shimizu showed with the original Ju-on a talented and creative person
making a film intuitively and far exceeding any audience expectations. Ju-on: The Beginning of the End shows commercial
filmmakers adapting a formula around audience expectations and wholly missing
the mark. Incidentally, I watched Ju-on:
The Beginning of the End via the Malaysian release (which was
English-friendly), and it had an extremely choppy frame rate for its
picture. I do not know if it is my DVD
machine or a flawed disc. So, in any
case, buyer beware.
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