In its late 1990s and early 2000s heyday, J-horror became a worldwide sensation by doing scares differently from what was then the norm in Hollywood. Instead of crazed slashers, Takashi Shimizu’s “Juon: The Grudge” (2002) frightened audiences with a Tokyo family of ghosts who infected visitors to their suburban home with a deadly curse.

Nearly 20 theatrical shockers later, Shimizu is still setting his scary movies in mundane locations — his latest, “Sana: Play With Me,” unfolds mostly in a high school — but what felt fresh at the turn of the millennium has hardened into formula.

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