MovieChat Forums > Ju-on (2003) Discussion > Question about the timeline...

Question about the timeline...

posted 17 years ago by Klaydoggy
7 replies | jump to latest

I saw this movie a few years ago, and rented it again recently...

I was watching it and 1 scene kinda puzzled me..

When Rika was on the phone with her teacher friend, the friend was going off about a student who wasn't attending classes, and she was at the house, and waiting on the parents to show. (Apologies for the crazy run-on sentence there)

I assume, the student was Toshio.. but, why would the friend be involved, if Toshio had died 5 years earlier? Like, Rika was already involved from being there to take care of the old woman. The friend was never there, and since Toshio had been dead, shouldn't have been involved.

I was just wondering where the error lied there.

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"Luke, I am your father." - Never said in any Star Wars movie.

[–] Advech 17 years ago

I'm kind of confused with what you're saying, what do you mean by involved?

This is what timeline is (I think): 5 years after the Taeko incident (after Toshio and Kayako were killed and the curse was born) Rika went into the house and stuff happened...then 3 or something years later she meets up with her friend who is a teacher and she has Toshio (who is dead) as a Student. The teacher goes to Toshios house and meets Toshio as a ghost in his normal form... then rika figures it all out and realises its that same house she went into.. she goes to it and her and her friend both die.

But then that leaves me with 2 questions of my own... If toshio has been dead for like 8 yrs... how come he was signed up for school? And how come Rika didn't die for liked 3 yrs since she's been in the house..but other people died like a day after they went in.

[–] joe_swift_jpn 17 years ago

In the "official-esque" timeline, Takeo kills Kayako and Toshio disappeared in May 1994.

Rika first was assigned to go to the house in May 1999. Mariko (her teacher friend) and Rika meet their fate in the house in June 2001. Rika's body wasn't discovered in the attic until the autumn of 2006.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get onto the tricky part...

I don't think that Mariko ever had Toshio signed up for her class. In fact, I don't even think that she really had a student missing from her class.

We know that the curse supernaturally forces people to act out/suffer the fate of people who have gone before. The Mariko example is that Mariko was somehow possessed by Kobayashi (from Ju-on: The Curse)... I think that she was be-grudged by her association with Rika, and the curse made her visit the house in search of her student who was missing from class.

There are other examples of people who didn't die right away after being in the house. Detective Toyama comes immediately to mind ;)

Joe / TYO
http://www.dhpressbooks.com/profile.php?prodid=13-486

[–] Klaydoggy 17 years ago

"I think that she was be-grudged by her association with Rika, and the curse made her visit the house in search of her student who was missing from class."

Unless someone has another explanation, this will have to do. It doesn't really make sense, but it is the most rational thing to answer the question.

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"Luke, I am your father." - Never said in any Star Wars movie.

[–] joe_swift_jpn 17 years ago

Well, not much makes sense in the Ju-On universe... :D

There are precedents of the curse taking over someone's consciousness and making them act out what other people went through... for example, Katsuya and Kazumi played out the Takeo & Kayako parts quite well.

If you watch Ju-On: The Curse (someone burned it in over at YouTube), you will see that the Kobayashi and Mariko parts fit quite well.

Joe / TYO
http://www.dhpressbooks.com/profile.php?prodid=13-486

[–] STEVE-1559 17 years ago

Mariko (her teacher friend) and Rika meet their fate in the house in June 2001. Rika's body wasn't discovered in the attic until the autumn of 2006.

It is highly unlike that Rika died in 2001. During the "Izumi" episode, the news announces that her body was found "with no marks on it" (or words to that effect). If she had been decaying up there for five years, it would have been impossible to make that determination.

Most likely Rika died shortly before Izumi. I'm not sure whether there is enough evidence in the film to say whether Rika died before or after Izumi's friends went missing.

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] joe_swift_jpn 17 years ago

Timeline of "Ju-On: The Grudge" (in Japanese). Please judge for yourself.

http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~kyoufu/juon/h03.html

Joe / TYO
Read Ju-On! http://www.dhpressbooks.com/profile.php?prodid=13-486