Let’s Ride #7
2008’s Ju-on Car is bad. Yep, that pretty much sums up my review. However, being the long-suffering, rarely read blogger that I am, I’m going to give you, faithful readers, a little more information about this terrible flick. Just be warned, this review will include spoilers and descriptions of a few graphic events that may disturb some readers.
The film opens with the violent, sexually-driven murder of of a young woman by a man in the back of a minivan. She is tied up and gagged and the murderer stabs her in her side. He then proceeds to thrust his fingers….and eventually his hand…..into the wound while making moaning sounds much like one would make during sexual intercourse. The scene goes on for an extended amount of time until the woman finally dies. The film then jumps ahead to the same minivan loaded with five college students. They are on a fun road trip to a beautiful waterfall. While driving along, the van begins making quiet sounds that sound a lot like a woman moaning or crying. Writing it off as a secondhand van doing secondhand things, the group continues to their destination. As they get closer to the waterfall, the driver of the van catches glimpses of what appears to be a ghost girl in the rearview mirror and the windows of the vehicle. They ultimately arrive at their destination and have a few moments of bliss until they meet a strange old man and then encounter a wounded stranger who shows up and asks them for help. One of the couples agree to bring the stranger to a hospital or police station, but they find themselves seemingly trapped in some sort of loop where they keep ending up on the same spot on the highway. Soon enough, members of the group begin dying one by one. The survivors locate the old man’s home, but can he help them before it’s too late? Watch, if you dare, Ju-on Car!
This movie is terrible. Thankfully it only runs about seventy minutes. It feels like some goofy found-footage film. To be honest, it probably would have worked better as a found-footage film, because that would allow for the poor cinematography, bad overacting, and poor ghost design. Yes, the ghosts in this film look almost exactly like every other Japanese ghost from the late 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. Blotchy black makeup around the eyes and pale skin, the token look of ghosts from Ju-on: The Grudge, Ringu, and countless other films, is the go-to look, although poorly executed, in Ju-on Car. In addition to that, the director, Hisaaki Nagaoka, just might have some sort of sexual fetish that involves violating dead and dying people, as this movie goes far enough to have one person, not the murderer, mind you, to engage in some necrophilia-fueled foreplay that ultimately ends in his death. This was actually the most disturbing part of the film, not any of the actual murders.
I honestly can’t recommend this film. The acting is bad. The special effects are bad. It all plays out like some poorly put together independent film that hopes to be an art house flick but ultimately ends up just being a weird fetish/horror flop. Making a film about a haunted minivan might sound cool, but Nagaoka fails to make this movie even remotely interesting.
Thanks for checking out my review. See you tomorrow!
Ken's Alternate Universe! 