Day 9 of Otakutober 2025: The Grudge vs. The Ring

I, Star, welcome readers to another spooky day of Otakutober 2025. I’m sure some of you Horror Otaku already know about the movie franchise and now classic staple of “The Ring” and “The Grudge” both starring curses and ghosts (with long black hair). So I’m going to break down some of the comparisons between the two stories in this post!

The Grudge is the American title to the story, Ju-On about a vengeful curse that a deceased family leaves behind in their home. Anyone who enters the establishment is in contact with the curse. The curse is essentially being, full of controllable rage or summoning a powerful Onryo ghost with the power to kill even the living.

There are 4 movies in the franchise and the last is like a remake but closer to the book plot. The major ghost story follows a rather popular ghost story in Japan dating back to 1636 when the story occurred. It follows a woman named Oiwa who was married to a samurai named Iemon in a fruitless marriage. In a last ditch effort to divorce Oiwa, Iemon decided to plan a series of horrible incidents to make the divorce valid in the eyes of community. So he devises a plot to have Oiwa raped so he can claim infidelity. The man couldn’t go through with it so Iemon poisoned Oiwa, disfiguring her face. The story varies in small details, sometimes involving more death and more gruesome factors.

Many actors and staff pray at her grave when reenacting her story to show respect since many have fallen ill or gotten hurt in rehearsal or performance.

While The Ring follows a famous ghost whose origins come from Himeji castle. A young servant girl disappears one night, and days later the servants discover her body at the bottom of the well. Similar to the other ghost story the plot details change depending on who you’re talking to. But most renditions involve broken plates. Either way people have reported hearing sounds at night of the clinking plates and the girl counting. But no one really knows how she got down there. Some say she was hiding the plates and some say she was hiding from the lord of another reason.

The amount of circles is what helped sell the creep factor of the story’s retellings on screen.

Anyways, I thought I’d put the record straight that although the ghost stories star similar ghosts they are in fact very different. And apparently there is a movie that puts them against each other.