*. This is the second of two very short films that began, in embryo, Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on franchise. I don’t think it’s quite right to see them as laying the foundation for Ju-on (as Shimizu claims they did) because all they really do is introduce the two main characters of Kayako (in Katasumi) and Toshio (here), without any narrative context. Context being admittedly hard to provide in three minutes.
*. J-horror deserves a lot of credit for injecting supernatural horror into modern technology, but I wouldn’t want to overstate this. Creepy telephone calls have long been a staple of scary movies. The jump with cell phones is that the scare can reach out and touch you anywhere, anytime. So no more “the caller is inside the house!” (Black Christmas) or standing just outside, watching you (Scream). The caller may be sitting right next to you! It’s a more intimate device in that way.
*. What this portability and ubiquity allows for is this movie’s jump ending. This is a version of the sudden radical collapsing-of-distance jump. Think of the gremlin on the wing of the plane in the Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (also included in Twilight Zone: The Movie). You don’t expect the creature to suddenly be so close, literally right in your face, when the passenger raises the blind of the window.
*. The appearance of Toshio works the same way. Anyone on a phone must be some distance away, we think. But then all of a sudden he’s right there, invading our personal space in a creepy way.
*. I say creepy because on the surface he doesn’t seem like an immediate threat. He’s just a kid. He doesn’t have a weapon. In fact I don’t know if he even has any clothes on. His mouth opens and some black tar comes out, but is that supposed to be dangerous?
*. As the series would later develop Toshio actually wouldn’t be much of a threat. He’s more like Kayako’s familiar, tying into his association with a black cat. If anything he’s a warning. Something bad is about to happen. And when you think about it, isn’t a warning delivered by an imp like this even scarier than what’s actually coming? We have to imagine it’s going to be something really bad.