Ju-On/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Yuki in the attic. She pops her head up into the attic, and, as she has a look around, the shot changes to that of a POV shot through the eyes of... something, watching. As Yuki fumbles for her lighter, the POV shot suddenly and rapidly moves towards her, until the something is right in front of Yuki's face, but completely obscured in the darkness. So terrified that she can barely move, Yuki switches on her cigarette lighter and... BAM! Note that the entire sequence (prior to the Jump Scare) is played out with no music whatsoever, which makes the whole thing so much more tense.
  • Kanna's face. That is all. Her poor mother's reaction makes it so much worse.
    • The manga adaptation takes this Up to Eleven and adds some more Gorn to the mix. Following her encounter with her daughter's jawless ghost, Kanna's mother becomes possessed. Cue Kanna's father arriving home to discover his wife preparing a meal. Said meal consists of Kanna's body, chopped into several pieces. Oh, and the first sight to greet the poor guy as he steps into the kitchen is Kanna's severed, jawless head staring vacantly at him from atop the table. But wait! It gets worse: Kanna's mother then starts to cut her own arm into slices all the while rambling in a monotonous manner.
  • The original (and some would say best) "Kayako crawls down the stairs" scene from the first video release. Holy. Crap. Not just for the horribly creepy movements, but for the unsettling look of pure hatred on Kayako's face.
  • Hitomi's vignette. Not even the bedcovers can protect you from this curse. The lead-up involving the TV is also horribly unsettling (see below). Not to mention the earlier scene in the staff toilets...
  • Tomoka's vignette. *shudder*
  • Two words: "wig scene". No matter whether one finds the build-up to be narmy or not, most tend to agree that the climax of that scene is pants-browningly terrifying. The music does not help.
  • Kayako emerging from the photocopier, anyone?
  • The birth scene.
  • The security camera.
  • Who can forget the television when Hitomi goes into her flat and the reporter is morphed into an Oiwa-style onryo with that death rattle.
  • In the original, made-for-TV movie, there's the ultimate fate of Kobayashi and his family: just as he's cornered by Kayako, he discovers that Takeo is still alive...and has just killed his (Kobayashi's) pregnant wife and (taken the unborn fetus from her body. What the character does with his "trophy" afterwards is the most terrifying, sickening thing in the entire movie franchise, surpassing anything Kayako and Toshio ever, ever do.
    • And then Kayako takes her revenge on Takeo, sloooowly crawling towards him in a plastic bag before emerging from it to claim his soul.
  • Also worth mentioning is the scene where Toyama is reviewing the footage from the surveillance camera, and sees a dark, staticy blot walking toward it. Eventually, the monitor goes pitch black... and then Kayako's eyes open directly in front of the camera. Caused me to be paranoid in the dark for a good while after that.
  • The scene in which Tatsuya returns home to find his wife Kazumi lying on the bed in a catatonic state after being terrorised by Toshio. He has no idea what's going on and tries to call an ambulance... when Toshio suddenly runs past in the background. Tatsuya doesn't see him, but he knows that someone else is in the room, and he proceeds to search it in a slow, quiet terror. What makes this scene so frightening is that the audience knows Toshio is there and just waiting to jump out, and the fact that the scene is just so incredibly quiet and tense. To make things even more tense, the moment where Tatsuya searches part of the room and the cupboard is done in a single, still shot that goes on for around a full minute.
  • An often overlooked example comes from the end of the third film, which strongly implies that the curse has spread over much of Tokyo (and possibly even further). The streets are completely empty and eerily silent - no birds, no traffic, nothing - and dozens of "missing" posters are plastered all over the place.
  • "Mar's Grave". Poor cat...
  • The Jump Scare in the first film when Kobayashi glances at his hands and, for a split second, sees them as Takeo's blood-soaked and cat fur-covered hands, with the horribly mutilated corpse of Mar lying below him.

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