THE GRUDGE (Ju-on, 2003)

Japan. Direction: Takashi Shimizu. Production: Taka Ichise / OZ Production. Screenplay: Takashi Shimizu. Photography: Tokusho Kikumura. Music: Shiro Sato. Edition: Nobuyuki Takahashi. Cast: Megumi Okuna, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa, Kanji Tsuda. Running time: 91 min

LANGUAGE: Japanese / SUBTITLES: Basque, English

Another one of the first contemporary classics in 21st-century Japanese cinema, directed by Takashi Shimizu, who filmed the same story three times: a few years earlier with a video version, this cinema version and then a United States remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, as well as the sequels to the first two. A social worker goes to a house where a bedridden old woman lives alone. The place is a bit hair-raising, and the woman appears to be terrified, but the degenerative disease she suffers from prevents her from communicating and she lives in a sort of limbo. Later on, the young girl contacts Toshio and his mother, Kayako, murdered years earlier.