Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

ebossert This is basically a compilation of killings by murderous spirits with enigmatic motives, which means that the entire film consists of horror sequences. The storytelling structure begins with the last segment (#10) and progresses backwards (to #1 and Prologue), but the stories and characters have little to no development so the setup seems like a gimmick.The score and sound effects are excellent and are the strongest positive of this movie, even using some chanting at times. The use of blurred images for ghosts is also effective. In some cases the entities will appear very subtly in the background, which is an impressive technique. The segments themselves range from mediocre to very good – Chapter 5 being the best with a really cool staircase scene. Atmosphere is dark and thick throughout. Yes, the onryo ghost girl is used at times (as well as the croaking noises from The Grudge), but this much maligned debut film from director Koji Shiraishi is better than its reputation suggests.

Danny_G13 Chronically unoriginal and derivative Japanese horror could practically be guilty of plagiarism.Ju-Rei (The Uncanny) is yet another in the conveyor belt of Oriental horror movies which lept on the Ring bandwagon of 1998. The vast majority of them have benefited from the fact that Eastern horror is still a relative unknown here in the west, and the tricks used in Asian film-making are still fairly new here too.Indeed, fairly similar films like Dark Water and The Grudge have been blessed by the fact that they're still something of a novelty in this part of the word, because otherwise we'd see right through them much in the same way that teen slasher after teen slasher from Hollywood gets tiresome and repetitive.However, there comes a time when even *novelty* becomes contrived, and Ju-Rei is a superb illustration of this.The Uncanny (God knows what the name means) is a ghost story (Surprise surprise) where a shadowy female figure (*feigned shock*) appears and people die as a result (Where have we seen *that* before?).So, no prizes for a fresh and interesting story line. However, the one direction the plot has taken to elevate it above its peers is the story's told in reverse. We start at Chapter 10, then work our way back to 1. Sure, Memento did this already, but nonetheless it's new for Japanese horror, to my knowledge.The direction, though, lets this film down big time. Sure, the plot and narrative are totally unoriginal, but this could be countered by decent direction. Unfortunately, the mechanics of the movie are simply dire. Too often scenes' camera work is forcing the viewer, as opposed to the viewer feeling free. Good direction is subtle and when a scare or chill is threatening, it doesn't force you into submission. This should be a voluntary response, meaning you'll get more out of the upcoming shock. Add to this the number of times where something is laboured at a snail's pace, or a camera shot is held for a stupidly long period of time and you begin to get the feeling this one's being directed by an amateur.Indeed, the budget appears to be substantially low, with some pretty poor attempts at acting compounding it. Being an English speaker I cannot obviously detect the subtlety of Japanese, but I can tell that the portrayals are universally struggled and decidedly unnatural.As for the shocks, well there is one moment which I actually failed to see coming, so I got a little kick out of it, but otherwise this movie was a blatant copy of everything else which has been before.This was a Japanese horror by the numbers.Avoidable.

captain_bungle Ghostly women with pale faces and long, dark hair? Check. Said ladies making vaguely comical cackling noises? Check. Creepy set-pieces leading to a confrontation with creepy long-haired, cackling, jittery ghost-women? Absolutely. Scary? Well...no.Anyone familiar with Japanese horror, and the Ju-on series in particular, will notice some similarities in the above description, and this isn't a brilliant coincidence. Ju-rei takes all of the best bits from Ju-on, and a few other films such as the out-of-focus spectres from Kairo, some of the sound design from the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre etc. and utilises them to almost zero effect. Every scare misses the mark because they have been done so much better so many times before. It's almost as if you are watching a parody of Japanese horror films - the way everything is constructed suggests a meeting with the filmmakers could have gone thus: 'Okay, so the girl hides under the covers but instead of having her come UNDER the sheet, she's waiting ON TOP OF IT!...and we'll use stock sound effect number 24b from the Ju-on catalogue of cackling.' As for the production values; there aren't any. Amateurishly shot on video with a total disregard for framing and lighting, most of Ju-rei looks too dark (in one case, a shot is obviously brightened up in post) and the quality of the transfer (on Pathfinder DVD) is poor, to say the least.I wouldn't recommend this film to anybody interested in Asian horror. It's dull, repetitive, derivative and completely unrewarding on any level. Avoid.

bensonmum2 There is a curse affecting all who come into contact with it. It's spread like a horrible disease that only requires contact with an affected person. If you have the curse, you can expect to die a terrible, horrific death. The problem is that you may not know you've been cursed until it's too late and you see the black figure coming to get you.If you are a fan of horror and the very brief description sounds familiar, don't be surprised. Ju-rei exhibits very little in the way of originality. It's the best parts of Ju-on or The Grudge repeated over and over. The ghosts look the same, sound the same, move the same, and have the same motivations. Furthermore, within the movie there is also little originality. The movie is divided into ten chapters. Once you've seen two or three of the chapters, you can pretty well guess what's going to happen next. One chapter is almost the same as the next chapter. There nothing much to make one chapter distinguishable from the others. While I found the first couple of chapters fairly frightening, the repetitive nature of the movie really hurts any scares in the later chapters.The story is told backwards from chapter 10 to chapter 1. At first this seemed to be an interesting, unique way of telling a story. Trying to figure out who was who and how they came into contact with the curse was part of the fun of playing along. But, after a few chapters, it really didn't seem to matter much. Again, the lack of originality really hurt the movie.Another problem I had with the movie was the beginning and ending. Or, to put it in a better way, the lack of a beginning and the lack of an ending. The movie presents no resolution to the events in the movie. It just ends. Likewise, the movie does not present a clear starting point. It's as if the curse has always been there and we are just viewing part of it's progress. I felt very unsatisfied.