The End?
The season finale of Ju-On: Origins begins in 1997 as a new couple move into our cursed house – a move that’s certainly not going to go well. Tomoko sits and rests her pregnant belly while she and her partner Yu check the news and notice reports about a vicious murder that’s occurred recently. Yu answers the door and Yusao arrives to greet them. Unfortunately as the attention turns to the dark history of the house, they become uncomfortable and inevitably tell Yusao to leave. That proves to be a pretty ill-fated decision as Tomoko begins experiencing deadly nightmares in the middle of the night. As she awakens and steps into the darkened hallways, Yu follows her out and the duo see the ghostly spirits of all those people the house has consumed over the years. In the morning, Yusao is brought back into the house with Haruka and Michiko to try and communicate with the spirit. Huddled together in the attic, they get their wish when they hear footsteps creeping in the shadows. This creeping manifests itself in a horrific experience for Tomoko, prompting her to be taken to hospital while Hakura and Yusao watch on with grim expressions. Outside though, Yusao’s grimness is replaced by dumbfounded wonder as he witnesses his Father staggering out the house. As he turns and screams, the ghostly figure suddenly disappears and burns into a simmering puddle on the ground. Up in the attic, Michiko sees the frightening apparition of the woman in white…but she’s not white anymore and instead a lot more grotesque and discolored. In the wake of what’s happened, Yusao speaks to the investigator and they wrap the case up, with him writing off the phone in the stomach as a fictional embellishment to his story and simply a coincidence. Back at the cursed house, Michiko motions to the garden where the spirit encourages her to dig up the dirt. With it watching on, she buries the tape under the dirt and the spirit disappears, instead replaced by the cries of a baby. As the episode closes out, she’s grabbed by someone from behind, which is where we leave things for now, with the presumed notion of her dying a grizzly death. Unless Netflix have season 2 up their sleeves of course!
The Review Write-Up
Those going into Ju-On: Origins expecting a scary horror will almost certainly be left disappointed. There’s nothing of the sort here and instead the series doubles down on its investigative origin story to deliver something that hones in on the cyclical nature of abuse and how that feeds into the very concept of The Grudge. With an open-ending and little resolution for a lot of our characters, Origins is not without its problems and this will almost certainly turn a lot of people away. Despite that though, fans of the franchise will certainly prefer this to The Grudge remake earlier this year but I’m not quite sure that’s praise enough for people to come away from this one feeling satisfied. Overall then, Ju-On: Origins serves up a pretty unfulfilling watch.
