A Review by Phil Calabro
2004, Columbia Pictures, Dir. Takashi Shimizu - Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jason Behr, Clea Duvall, William Mapother, KaDee Strickland, Grace Zabriskie, Bill Pullman, Ryo Ishibashi, Yuya Ozeki, Takako Fuji, Takashi Matsuyama
Most reviews have credited this American remake of 'Ju-On: The Grudge' as being something 'lost in translation'. In my opinion, this movie is just lost in general. Although it's got great potential scares, 'Grudge' is too weighed down by its inability to present said scares originally and its the disconnected relationship between the storyline and its characters. Riddled with plotholes and inconsistencies, the movie just doesn't seem to care that it's so silly in the end.
In Japan, a young American nurse Karen (Gellar) is given a brand new job to caretake for a mentally unstable woman at a house in the depths of the city. While staying in the house for the day, she witnesses eerie events and encounters strange presences around her. She soon learns that an evil spirit lives inside the house, who reside there because a mother (Fuji) and her son (Ozeki) were killed by their father (Matsuyama) in a murderous rage. The grudge is carrying on by the inhabitants of this house, especially the family members (Duvall, Mapother, Strickland) of the mentally unstable woman, who found themselves haunted by the strange figures of the family, as well as a college professor (Pullman) who the mother found herself attracted to. A police officer (Ishibashi) whose colleagues were killed by the spirits searches to find and kill those responsible.
I feel bad for Sarah Michelle Gellar. Taking a sabbatical from acting (and I don't call Scooby Doo 2 acting), she comes back ready for a role, but finds out all she has to do nothing for her role except to look scared. Hardly talking throughout the entire film, Gellar seems bored as the typical pretty white girl Karen in the middle of an angry haunted house. Her boyfriend, Doug, is very untalented and is mostly there as a pawn for the climax. The other actors, especially William Mapother and Clea DuVall, are equally boring and uninterested in their roles - but the acting doesn't have to be good anyway - it's a horror film, for goodness sakes. The only cast members who feels strong in their roles are Bill Pullman and Ryo Ishibashi. Both seem to care what they look like on the screen, and would rather at least give it the old college try then to look like whimpering idiots.
The movie starts off promising but then sharply shoots itself in the foot. Its biggest flaw is its scares. The first time, we have the character reaching into a dark enclosed space, then all of a sudden - SCREAM AHHH! - and the audience jumps back in their seat. The same trick is done the next fifteen times, and the audience doesn't move a muscle. The repetition feels so wrong, like we're wasting six bucks to see the first six minutes of the movie. Also, the character development is dreadful. It feels essential that in good horror films, we get to know at least a little about our victim - but as most cheap ones pull out, 'The Grudge' couldn't care the least even if we didn't know the name. Our protagonist is just a meaningless person, a figurehead, that everything will happen to but we won't know why or how they will react. And the biggest flop is how inconsistent the movie is. Flipping on and off, different plot elements are presented throughout the movie, as well as superfluous scenes that seem to have no relation to the horror itself.
'The Grudge' isn't a good movie in the long run, but it could've been worse. It wasn't entertaining me, but providing me a lot of unintentional humor for my money. Silly as it may have been, I feel the director (Shimizu, who did the original as well) wanted this film to be taken a little more seriously. But the rule thumb is that just because it did well in one country doesn't mean the same screenplay will be given the same presentation in another.
1.5/4 stars
