Ju-On (franchise)

Ju-On originally started off with two short films which were included as vignettes in Gakkō no kaidan G. The story of these shorts was later further explored in two low-budget, V-Cinema, Japanese television movies in 2000, both shot in the course of nine days. Three years later, due to the success of the videos, director Takashi Shimizu made a theatrical sequel to the V-Cinema videos, titled Ju-On: The Grudge. Another sequel was released in 2003, titled Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (or simply Ju-On 2). A year later Takashi Shimizu directed The Grudge, the American remake. It is primarily based on the first theatrical version of Ju-On, but it contains scenes re-enacted from all of the Ju-On movies. Following The Grudge 2 and 3 (released in Japan as Juon: Pandemic, and Juon - The Grudge 3), in 2009, two films titled Ju-On: White Ghost and Black Ghost were released in honour of the series' tenth anniversary. 2014's Ju-On: The Beginning of the End and 2015's Ju-On: The Final Curse are set in an alternate continuity that altered much of the series' original backstory.

• Katasumi and 4444444444 (shown within television movie Gakkō no kaidan G)

Katasumi follows the demise of Kanna and her classmate, Hisayo. They are feeding rabbits at school when Kayako, the ghost in the series and the curse's fulfiller, attacks them both.

4444444444 follows the death of Tsuyoshi, Kanna's older brother. Tsuyoshi comes to school to meet his girlfriend, Mizuho, and finds a mysterious ringing cell phone whose caller ID shows a strange number, 4444444444 (The number 4 in Japanese is a homophone of the Japanese character for "death"). The ghost of Toshio, Kayako's son and also one of the curse's fulfillers, appears and takes Tsuyoshi; his body is never found.

The stories of Kanna and Tsuyoshi are further extended in Ju-On: The Curse.

• Ju-On: The Curse (V-Cinema)

The first Ju-On follows the lives of the people connected to a house in Nerima, Tokyo where a gruesome murder of a housewife occurred. School teacher Shunsuke Kobayashi visits the home of his absent student, Toshio, where he discovers the boy beaten and bruised. He waits for Toshio's parents to come but soon realizes what the Saeki family has become and is killed, his wife and unborn child being murdered as well by Kayako's crazed husband Takeo after he learned Kayako was obsessively in love with Kobayashi. Takeo is in turn killed by Kayako's ghost. The movie also explores the fates of the next family to live in the house, the Murakami family, as well as two people who come in contact with them, including Mizuho Tamura, who is killed while waiting for her boyfriend Tsuyoshi at the school. The film extends the stories of Tsuyoshi and Kanna from Katasumi and 4444444444. The last segment shows a snippet of Kyoko Suzuki's arrival, a psychic who was invited by her brother to explore the house that he was going to sell, which was the cursed Saeki house. This movie showed death or vanishing as the curse's result.

Chiaki Kuriyama as Mizuho Tamura in Ju-On: The Curse

• Ju-On: The Curse 2 (V-Cinema); (Available only in Japan, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, France and Belgium)

Ju-on: The Curse 2 continues the story of Kyoko Suzuki and shows how the curse fatally affected her and everyone in her family. A large portion of this film is a recap of the previous installment. It also portrays the story of a couple, the Kitadas, living in the house as the wife becomes possessed by Kayako's spirit and murders her husband. The film features the extended storyline of Detective Kamio from Ju-on: The Curse. The Curse 2 also introduces a group of school girls who had sneaked into the house, one of them being Izumi Toyama, whose story would be continued in Ju-On: The Grudge.

• Ju-On: The Grudge

Ju-On: The Grudge centers around the fate of social worker Rika Nishina. Rika comes to visit the house of Tokunagas (the old Saeki house) where she was summoned after the social worker assigned to the house has disappeared. Surviving a terrible experience in that house, she discovers the truth behind the deaths connected to the house. It was later revealed that Rika was the one destined to play out the curse: she was to die the same way Kayako did and become the next fulfiller of the Ju-on. In this movie, it was revealed that the curse has some time-traveling capabilities (or residual haunting) where a victim may see another victim from another time frame. An example is Det. Yuji Toyama seeing what will happen to his daughter, Izumi, years after his death when she enters the house. Izumi was only 12 years old when Yuji died and when she entered the house at 16, she sees her father just before he encounters Kayako. However, this is not just prior to his death, because he runs out of the house and it is later revealed by Izumi's mother that he went insane before he died.

It is worth noting that this film and its sequel are not remakes of the V-Cinema films, as is commonly believed but are, in fact, sequels.

• Ju-On: The Grudge 2

Ju-On: The Grudge 2 revolves around the actress Kyoko Harase and her pregnancy. After a car accident caused by Toshio's ghost, Kyoko apparently miscarries. When her doctor assures her of a healthy pregnancy, Kyoko becomes perplexed. It is revealed that Kyoko was involved with a horror television production filmed at a haunted house - the house of the Saekis in Nerima. Producer Keisuke finds Kyoko and informs her that most members of the film crew have either been killed or gone missing. The outcome of Kyoko's pregnancy is horrifyingly revealed as she gives birth to Kayako. Several years later, a child version of Kayako pushes her new mother, Kyoko, off an overpass and kills her. She is then seen walking away into the streets.

• The Grudge

This was largely a remake of Ju-On: The Grudge, following the story of Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a social worker assigned to take care of Emma Williams. The movie varies slightly from the original, because Karen burns the house and survives the curse. However, the house is saved.

• Tales from the Grudge

Three short films (Hotel, School, House) titled Tales from the Grudge were released as part of marketing The Grudge 2.[8]

• The Grudge 2

The film tells the story of a school-girl called Allison who was pressured to enter the house by her friends Vanessa and Miyuki. The curse follows her to Chicago even though she tries to escape it, causing her Chicago apartment to be cursed. The film also follows the story of Aubrey, Karen's younger sister, on her quest to stop the curse after Karen falls to her death from a hospital roof.

• The Grudge 3 was released on DVD on May 12, 2009. This film is a continuation of the events that took place in the Chicago, Illinois vignette of The Grudge 2.
• Ju-On: Black Ghost
• Ju-On: White Ghost

In honor of the 10th anniversary of the Ju-On series Ju-On: White Ghost and Ju-On: Black Ghost premiered in simultaneous screenings in theaters in Japan on June 27, 2009.[9] Takashi Shimizu and Taka Ichise returned to supervise the films' production, each with a different director.

Black Ghost revolves around a girl named Fukie who has been having bizarre attacks accompanied by a death rattle. Test results show a cyst inside Fukie’s body, but that cyst is actually the physical remnant of a twin that Fukie's body partially absorbed in the womb. The cyst holds a grudge for not being born and influences several characters to commit murder sprees via spiritual possession. Fukie's mother, Kiwako takes the spirit (inside Fukie's body) and jumps off the hospital rooftop with it, killing them both. However, this leads to the spirit being released from the body.

White Ghost revolves around a son that brutally murdered all five of his family members and ultimately hanged himself. One of the victims was his niece Mirai, who he had sexually abused. Mirai's former friend Akane saw evidence that she was being sexually abused by her uncle, but did not help her. Several years later Mirai's spirit came to haunt her.

Though there is no evidence, these two movies are believed to be in continuity with the original films.

• Ju-On: The Beginning of the End

Produced and co-written by Takashige Ichise with Masayuki Ochiai directing and co-writing,[10] this is the first film in the franchise that has no involvement from series creator Takashi Shimizu. Unlike White Ghost and Black Ghost, the film features the Saeki family, including Takeo, Kayako, and Toshio, albeit with an altered backstory.

The Beginning of the End includes two storylines, one set in 2004 that focuses on four schoolgirls who disappeared one by one since their visit to the cursed house, and one set ten years afterward in 2014, which follows Yui Shono, a new elementary schoolteacher whose life is tainted with the curse after a visit to the house of an absent student, Toshio Saeki.

• Ju-On: The Final Curse

The eleventh and final installment was released in 2015, again produced and co-written by Takashige Ichise and directed and co-written by Masayuki Ochiai. It follows the new continuity established by The Beginning of the End.[11]

The Final Curse follows Mai, the older sister of The Beginning of the End lead character, Yui Shono, as she becomes involved with the curse while searching for the whereabouts of her missing sister.

• Sadako vs. Kayako

The latest installment sees a crossover between Ju-On and fellow Japanese horror series Ring, pitting Kayako against Sadako Yamamura. At the end of the movie, both ghosts combine atop Sadako's well, into which a girl named Yuri Kurahashi, having decided to use herself as a bait, had jumped. After they fuse together, they become one powerful ghost named Sadakaya.

• The Grudge

In March 2014, it was officially announced that Ghost House Pictures and Good Universe would be rebooting the franchise and that Jeff Buhler would be writing the film.[12] Buhler stated that the reboot would feature all new characters and ghosts and not tie-in to the mythology of the original series.[13] In July 2017, it was announced that Nicolas Pesce was set to direct the film, and would also be rewriting the script based on Buhler's draft.[14] On March 2, 2018 it was reported that Andrea Riseborough was in talks to star in the film, and on March 15, 2018 it was confirmed that Riseborough and Demian Bichir had officially joined the cast. It was also announced that the film would begin production in May 2018 and that Sony Pictures had acquired worldwide distribution rights.[15][16] On March 16, 2018 it was announced that John Cho had joined the cast.[17]

In September 2019, The Grudge director Nicolas Pesce expressed interest in a crossover film between The Grudge and the American The Ring film series, which was done for the first time in 2016 with Sadako vs. Kayako.[18] In January 2020, Pesce expressed further interest in a sequel being set in both a different part of the world than America or Japan, and in a different "less contemporary" time period compared to previous films.[19]

In May 2020, a TV series adaptation was announced and will be released exclusively on Netflix worldwide on July 3.[20]

In 2003, novelizations of stories from the series were written by Kei Ohishi. The first novel, Ju-on, elaborates on events and characters from Ju-On: The Curse, The Curse 2 and Ju-On: The Grudge. A novel titled Ju-On 2 was released the same year, which elaborates on the events from Ju-On: The Grudge 2.[37] Novelizations of Ju-On: White Ghost and Black Ghost were published in 2009. Ju-On 2, White Ghost and Black Ghost did not receive English translations. In 2014, a novelization of The Beginning of the End was released and a novelization of The Final Curse in 2015.

Official Japanese-language novelizations of the American films were also written by Kei Ohishi,[38] the first being a novelization of The Grudge (released in Japan as The Juon), which was published in 2005 and generally follows the premise of the film faithfully. A novelization of its sequel, The Grudge 2 (released in Japan as Ju-On: Pandemic), was published later on in 2007. The novels were all published by Kadokawa Shoten and only the first novel received an English translation.

Two manga adaptations were released in 2003 in Japan and 2006 in the US, titled Ju-On: Video Side and Ju-On: Vol. 2. The manga follows events from the series that were omitted in the novels.