JU-ON: The Grudge occasionally contains some interesting imagery. That's the only good thing I have to say about this game. I'm not kidding: this game is a real stinker. If I were you, I would stay far, far away from this train wreck of a project. This game is an ugly, broken piece of garbage, and not even the most die-hard of JU-ON fans should even consider a rental. It's probably the worst survival horror game I've ever had the misfortune to encounter, and I'm confident that playing it is worse than the franchise's trademark curse.

If you like staring at black screens, you'll absolutely love what JU-ON is able to do with the Wii hardware. More often than not, 80% of the screen is completely blanketed in darkness, and the other 20% is occupied by low-resolution textures and boring environments. Granted, each chapter takes place in its own decrepit building, but other developers have been able to do amazing things with these environments. Back to my one compliment: the ghosts actually look pretty good and can be creepy whenever they're not trying to startle you.

There's not a whole lot of sound in JU-ON: The Grudge. What's there only serves as a way of letting you know that you're about to encounter one of the game's countless heavily-manufactured jump scares. Each time you open a door, a synthesizer note hangs in the air for several seconds until whatever's behind the door does its thing. If, like me, you have no respect for cheap jump scares, JU-ON will bore you to tears.

JU-ON: The Grudge begins as Erika Yamada unwisely follows her dog into an abandoned warehouse. She ends up coming into contact with the grudge curse. The grudge curse is almost of a viral nature: it forms when someone dies in a fit of extreme rage or sorrow, and it manifests itself as a very real and very vengeful ghost. Those who are killed by the curse become part of its cycle. Long story short, Erika ends up unleashing the grudge curse on her entire family as soon as she returns home. You don't only play as Erika; you play as different characters who must deal with the curse alone. Sounds good, right? Wrong.

There's hardly any gameplay to speak of in JU-ON: The Grudge. You slowly wander each level armed with nothing but a flashlight, and in order to progress, you must look for flashing objects and objectives. Along the way, you'll be struck with visions of pure ghastliness, most of which involve Kayako Saeki (the trademark creepy woman) and her son Toshio, who meows like a cat while pawing frantically at the air. Sometimes, you'll even be attacked -- in those circumstances, you'll often have to either defend yourself or get away. You must keep your eyes peeled and explore every nook and cranny, because you don't have a whole lot of time. You'll find an explanation for that down in the Game Mechanics section.

JU-ON: The Grudge is occasionally a punishing game. However, it's not supposed to ever be difficult. The broken mechanics and pointless limitations constantly stand in your way. If a ghost gets you and you don't flail your arms appropriately, you are sent back to the beginning of the level. Unfortunately, the game rarely registers exactly what you're doing. If your flashlight dies, you are sent back to the beginning of the level. I failed to mention that the life of a full flashlight battery lasts only a few minutes. If your character actually moved at the pace of a regular human being, this wouldn't have been so much of an issue.

JU-ON: The Grudge has no replay value... it also has no "play" value. Here's how it will go. You'll take the game home, boot it up, and slog through the first couple of levels. When it finally dawns on you that it's not going to get any better, you'll feel pretty miserable that you actually paid for it. Here's some advice: if you are a JU-ON fan who needs to experience everything Grudge-related, do yourself a favor: buy this game from a retailer that has an extremely lenient return policy.

The gameplay would have been bad enough, had the gameplay mechanics actually worked. Alas, they do not. The controls are borderline unresponsive, and they will frustrate you to tears. The controls are exclusively mapped to the Wii-mote. The (B) button will make your character walk forward, and pointing at the screen will aim your flashlight. Turns out, pointing is also how you turn your character. Whenever you point away at the screen, your character will turn at a preset speed. You can only stop turning once you've pointed straight to the middle of your television. It's just a mess.

Occasionally, a ghost will attack you. Flashing arrows at the edges of your screen will indicate which direction you must swipe your Wii-mote. Hooray for mindless Wii-waggle! Truth time: it's not fun and it's consistently unresponsive throughout.

Whose idea was it to make the main character walk at less than a snail's pace? I'm not exaggerating -- the characters you control are probably the slowest-moving characters in all of gaming. Think back to how slow you moved in the Aftermath mission of Call of Duty 4. These characters aren't hauling their own broken bodies of the burning wreckage of a downed helicopter, but they move like they are. Are they really that scared? If so, what a bunch of world-class sissies. This inexplicable lethargy kills the pacing of the game and makes it that much more dull.

A second player can join in the tedium, but the "multiplayer" is not a cooperative affair at all. The role of the second player is to trigger jump scares. (Oh, no!) It's a laughably stupid mechanic that is consistent with the poor quality of the entire experience. Still, it's not like full-fledged co-op would have worked in JU-ON to begin with.

This game bills itself as a "haunted house simulator." Haunted houses are supposed to be fun, if memory serves me correctly. JU-ON: The Grudge could call itself a "crappy survival horror game simulator," but then again, it wouldn't be a simulation.