Born in Maebashi city, Gunma prefecture, Japan, in July 27, 1972. Belonging to Booster Project Inc.

   While studying theater at university, he studied with Yasu Ohashi (director / stage) and Toshiro Ishido (screenwriter). He started his career as a prop apprentice for a film “Sleeping Man” directed by Kohei Oguri who is from same town as him. He recommended by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hiroshi Takahashi, and made his debut as a director for a 3-min short film. 

   The next year his straight-to-video films “Ju-On: The Curse” and “Ju-On: The Curse 2” were released and the titles got popular by word of mouth and SNS. Shimizu made his Hollywood debut in 2004 with “The Grudge,” remake of Ju-On, produced by Sam Raimi. The film had the number one spot for two weeks on the US box office. “The Grudge 2,” he directed in 2006, also got the top spot on the US box office as well.

   His film credits as a director are: “Reincarnation” (2005), and “Kiki’s Delivery Service” (2014), “The Blue Hearts / A Boy’s Song” (2017), “Innocent Curse” (2017), and so on.

   In recent years Shimizu has worked also as a producer for the films “Rigor Mortis” (Hong Kong, 2013), “Kwaidan” (2014) and is the executive producer of the full CG film “Resident Evil: Vendetta” in 2017.

   He deals with fantasy, science fiction, comedy, suspense, mystery, etc., focusing on horror and thriller.

   A short science film of the 3D dome "The Man from the 9 Dimensions" (2016), which deals with the Superstring Theory of theoretical physics, is now screened at National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan).

   His latest film “Howling Village” will be released in 2020.