A hallmark of the international horror scene, Takashi Shimizu's legendary Ju-On served as a lightning rod when it was first released in 2002. This came about not only for the effect it had on drawing warranted attention at Asian genre cinema who discovered other similar titles from Japan produced in the wake of its success, but also cultural acceptance as many of those efforts were given US reboots and remakes. While the franchise that spawned has had its ups and downs over the ensuing near-two decades, this new adaptation on Netflix Japan takes a new and unique look at the iconic series by moving away from Kayako and looking at a newfound aspect of the series.
Appearing on a TV show together, paranormal researcher Yasuo Odajma (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) and actress Haruka Honjo (Yuina Kuroshima) become intertwined when she relates a story that intrigues him. New student Kiyomi Kawai (Ririka) arrives at a high-school and immediately learns of a cursed house nearby from several other students who take her over and proceed to rape her before they encounter a strange presence in the house and are forced to leave. As Haruka tries to move on from the taping and continue work as normal, their lives intertwine again years over when Child Protection Services agent Kimie Ariyasu (Kana Kurashina) begins investigating the residents living there and try to put everything together in order to stop the curse from spreading.
Overall, “Ju-On: Origins” might have a lot to like but it will frustrate some viewers. Most notably is the lack of focus away from Kayako and Toshio in exchange for focusing on the paranormal researcher Yasuo and his quest to find out what happened in the house. Much like “Halloween 3” moving away from the iconic character already established in the franchise and the backlash that received upon release, Miyake tries to look at something else entirely, while saying these events take place in the same universe. Instead, he offers up a look at the abuse and trauma associated with living in the house which carries out through the three interlocking stories involving the actress, the schoolgirls and the missing children. These are nowhere near sufficient in terms of telling an origin story when the ghost is already around and people enter the house without dying.
On top of that, the series is exceptionally boring and confusing. This lack of ghost action means that the featured player is Yasuo who isn't interesting or involved with anything creepy. His quest to get to the bottom of the incident and look into the source of the paranormal stories coming from the house told by Haruka and from his own experiences serve as a fine driving point to intersect with the ghost and generate something exciting. However, the series moves way too slow to be of much interest with the first few episodes setting up several storylines that don't need to be explored since they're not that interesting, bouncing around between the personal life of Haruka after the TV show or the schoolgirls breaking into the haunted house.
It's also hard to tell at times whether these events are all concurrent with each other or not, since an opening prologue makes it clear some time-travel is involved but after that, it's hard to tell. Since the times are only given at the beginning of each episode and there are jumps within as characters die off-screen mere moments after we were last with them, these make the series hard to focus on. Moreover, a lack of context or explanations also undoes a lot of good, from a woman fleeing a rape scene with the person who just raped her, a brutal beatdown never explained or brought up and the finale of the last episode being a true cliffhanger that brings about more questions than answers.
That's not to say the series doesn't have some positives. A graphic rape scene to start off one of the episodes is quite brutal and far more shocking than anything in the film's canon, considering the participants and the emotional trauma at stake. Likewise, some of the gore scenes later on in the series get rather brutal, especially a sequence involving a fetus carved out of pregnant woman's belly or a particularly gruesome series of stabbings with a butcher knife. That the few times we're given glimpses of the ghost out-of-focus behind victims offers some chilling moments, and that these grow over time with the later episodes getting more brutal and shocking scenes is a plus for it to end on a high note.
On the surface, “Ju-On: Origins” is a technically well-crafted effort that has moments of genuinely terrifying supernatural encounters and an intriguing enough idea that could've worked. Almost forgotten, though, is the fact that Shimizu's original film is actually the fourth film in the franchise and that two prior efforts, a two-part series of TV movies released a few years before “Ju-On” served as a proper origins story for the films making this seem redundant and unnecessary. Really, this series is only for the most ardent fans of the franchise or J-horror in particular while viewers spurned by the franchise or tired of this genre don't have to watch the series at all.
