Takashi Shimizu

For Japanese horror director Takashi Shimizu, it all began at the Film School of Tokyo. Under the tutelage of teacher and fellow genre filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, he learned many of the techniques that he would go on to later apply in his thriller series of "Ju-On" films. The first two movies actually went straight to video in 2000, but thanks to their growing popularity as cult films, Shimizu was able to make the next entry as a full-fledged theatrical release in 2003. The 2003 film spawned a Japanese sequel and also attracted the attention of Hollywood as part of a great movement by the studios towards practitioners of Asian horror cinema. Translated literally as "The Grudge," the 2004 English language remake annexed portions from a number of the different Japanese films and starred Sarah Michelle Gellar in the title role. Shimizu directed the 2006 Hollywood horror sequel "The Grudge 2," which added a character player by Amber Tamblyn, before handing the directing reins on 2009's "The Grudge 3" to Toby Wilkins. Following his prodigious "Ju-On" and "Grudge" films output, Shimizu began dabbling in 3-D Japanese entries with the 2009 thriller "The Shock Labyrinth" and the 2011 horror film "Rabbit Horror."