HARASE Kyoko is an actress starring in a TV show covering one particular haunted house where reports of mysterious deaths and missings continue. On the night she finishes shooting, Kyoko meets an accident and loses her husband as well as the baby she’s been carrying. Barely recovered from the catastrophe, she starts to experience inconceivable horror. Despite the worries that repetition of terror-evoking images can lead to boredom, Ju-on: The Grudge 2 proves it is still one of the scariest movies out there, by offering a story almost independent from its predecessors, with new characters and events. Toshio and Kayako, the series’s virtual icons, rule as ever with their overwhelming power to provoke terror. The image of Kayako approaching her victim, drenched in blood, limping with twisted joints, is just about the creepiest thing one can imagine. In this film, what is particularly memorable about SHIMIZU Takashi’s directing is the process in which he solves the mystery of the “thudding” sounds coming from the house next door through the wall. The eerie, tension-building sounds are repeated every night, at around the same time, at certain intervals. The moment when the truth about them is finally revealed, the audience gasps with shock and astonishment! (KIM Jong Chul)