Famous ghosts put on a ghoulish display at Japan baseball game
The worlds of Ju-On and Ring, two Japanese horror mega-franchises that made it big in North America, weren’t linked until 2016, roughly two decades after they kicked off. Ju-on, also known as The Grudge, began as a couple of short films and expanded into the 2002 Takashi Shimizu movie that introduced the house in Tokyo haunted by (justifiably) vengeful ghost Kayako and her even more creepy ghost kid, Toshio, both murder victims (hence the grudge). That movie spawned three direct sequels, as well as several shorter works, novelizations, a video game, and TV series.
Ring, meanwhile, based on a series of novels from Koji Suzuki, gave the world the somewhat less-sympathetic Sadako, a serial killer who curses people with her doomed VHS tape before memorably popping out of the TV screen. Hideo Nakata directed the first major adaptation (after an ealier TV movie), generating six sequels to date, as well as numerous side projects (a TV series, a South Korean remake, manga, etc.)
Both Grudge and Ring, of course, generated American remakes which went on to spawn sequels themselves (and, for The Grudge, a remake of the remake), though, for our purposes, those are in unrelated universes. 2016, though, saw Japan’s answer to Freddy vs. Jason in Sadako vs. Kayako: Sadako, it seems, is back on her videotape bullshit, and the young woman cursed to die is informed, helpfully, that the only way to stop Sadako is to summon an equally vengeful demon and pit them against each other, Celebrity Deathmatch-style. Promotion for the movie included a baseball exhibition involving Toshio and the two women, all of whom are very good at curses and murder, less good at sports.
Highlights: The original Japanese Grudge movie is pretty good, and the first Ring movie is great. The American The Ring from 2002 is excellent, and Sadako vs. Kayako is wonderfully silly.
Where to stream: The first three Japanese Ring movies are on Shudder and Tubi, and Sadako vs. Kayako is on Shudder. The first Ju-on is on Freevee.
