It could be said that if you've seen one of the new breed of Japanese horror films, you've seen them all; anyone familiar with the genre would be able to watch Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On: The Grudge and predict just about when and where every scare is going to occur. If you're one of those people, then you may well know what I mean when I say that this film is not quite as good as Hideo Nakata's Ringu or Dark Water, or even Uzumaki or Peter Chan's Going Home, but much better than Pulse or The Eye.

Perhaps, though, you've only seen the American remake of Ringu, or perhaps you're like me and know you'll get scared every single time you see a ghostly girl with long matted black hair hanging over her face inching her way towards the camera. In that case, you'll probably enjoy Ju-On. It's only scary in fits and starts, but it's got a pretty ingenious narrative structure that completely hides the fact that it, in fact, doesn't have a narrative at all.

The film is set in and around a haunted house in Japan; we first see it from the point of view of a social worked named Rika (Megumi Okina), who shows up to take care of a catatonic old woman. She hasn't been there an hour before she stumbles upon a little boy sealed up in a closet. Shortly thereafter, a new scene begins in the same house, as a young couple go about their morning business. The old woman is still there; it turns out she's the husband's mother. While he's at work, his wife cleans up the house; something's been making a mess of her house every night. She assumes it's her senile mother-in-law, until she catches sight of a pale face peering at her from the upstairs vent.

The husband comes home and finds his wife unconcsious, or perhaps dead. The situation escalates into terrifying supernatural territory before another the story restarts again with yet another new character and we start to figure out what Shimizu is doing. An opening narration explained that Ju-On is a Japanese term for a curse so strong that it kills anyone it comes in contact with, and throughout the movie we follow a handful of characters who all visit the house, or know someone who's visited the house, all of whom start to see ghostly children and dark shadows lurking in the corners.

The curse itself has something to do with a man who murdered his wife and daughter, who then become the personification of that evil act; usual haunted house stuff. Because the story is so fragmented and interconnected, though, we get the sense that we're solving a mystery as each scene plays out. Most of them occur in chronological order, but one or two do not, and there's some pleasure to be had in figuring out how everything fits together, even if it all doesn't add up to anything more than a story that ends exactly where it begins. Every character comes across the ghost, and subsequently meets an unfortunate fate; Rika lasts a little bit longer than everyone else, so that she can provide the film with a beginning, middle and end.

That, of course, leaves it wide open for a sequel, which in fact there already is. It's also directed by Takashi Shimizu, who must know this story by heart by now -- he's directed it often enough. This particular film is in fact a remake of a TV film he made in 2000, and the sequel is a remake of the sequel to that TV movie; come October, we'll get to see his fifth take on the material, when his American remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as the social worker gets released.

He may not be the most original storyteller, but he knows what works; the film is full of creepy camera angles and sound effects that suggest things far more frightening than anything that's actually seen. Of course, I don't want to suggest that the ghosts themselves aren't scary, and the surveillance video footage, the scrambled television transmission, the shower, the dripping water, the corpses in the attic and the old man in the retirement home are all used to good effect as well. Oh, and the cat that hides in the closet, ready to jump out and provide a false scare to unsuspecting victims and, if they're not too jaded, equally unsuspecting viewers.