Ju-On: White Ghost Black Ghost (2009) 1h 1m / 1h

In the rivalry between the two, I prefer Ju-On over Ringu.  Maybe it's because Kayako has the additional striker of the small semi-naked child that just makes cat noises which gives her the advantage to topple Sadako, or the fact that I just find the entire concept of a Ju-On much more frightening than a well ghost creeping on you with outdated media.  Either way,  I've owned this for longer than I'd like to admit after claiming to be a fan of something.  Also, post script to this, I've had Shudder for like two years and still haven't watched Sadako vs. Kayako, but that's mainly because I watch so many horror movies for this website.

Why must you haunt me cursed ghost?!

White Ghost Black Ghost is actually two separate films.  White Ghost kicks things off with someone that I refer to as Sentai Sanata (due to his clothes and motorcycle) delivering a Christmas cake to the Ju-Oh house.  After a short time he realizes the woman interacting with him is actually acting on a loop and his investigation of the house causes him to find the bodies of a murdered family before finding the Ju-On spirit.  In this case it's an older woman holding a basketball because she's about to bring the Shaq Attack and dunk all over his ass!  Actually you find out why later but she does have a basketball each time she appears.  The rest of this film jumps around in regards to the characters and their spot in the timeline.  It leaves you a bit bewildered at first until you begin connecting the threads.

Black Ghost focuses on a young girl in the hospital.  Following in White Ghost's steps with an erratic time line, we find that after an episode where the girl freezes, screams until the Kayako noise comes from her mouth, and then face plants, her parents are concerned for her health.  Her father checks on her only for her to grab his right hand and say "you killed a woman with this hand."  It was an awesome moment.  Most of this is focused on trying to find out what is wrong with the girl but when we learn what is wrong with her and how it gets handled it makes this the far superior of the two films.

I have a ton of notes on White Ghost Black Ghost, a lot of which is me popping off at different moments with "OMFG!" or "That's fuckin' rad!"  It helps to come into these knowing the previous two films.  Kayako is absent from both but I like that since it allows us to apply the Ju-On curse to anyone that dies in a rage, not just this one specific individual.  It also prevents the staleness that can happen with the "slasher" genre where screenwriters attempt to break things up with a fake Jason or an evil Halloween mask company.

If you could only watch one of these, then I would say to definitely watch Black Ghost, but both are pretty great.

I give Ju-On White Ghost Black Ghost 5 oni masks out of 5: