The Grudge



The Grudge is the American remake of Ju-On: The Gudge (2003), and I can probably count on one hand the number new scary gags the new version has that the older version doesn't. This remake, by the same writer/director, is that close. The biggest difference is that "the grudge" is mostly haunting a surprisingly large population of ex-pat Americans in Tokyo, and the movie has been restructured to simulate (if not actually contain) a plot.


"Oh, I get it. You're a ghost doomed to replay the same events over and over, like that time in high school when me and my boyfriend Angel got taken over by the ghosts of two students who had been involved in a murder years before and we started to do the same things but then it turned out..."

Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a student volunteering at a social organization in Tokyo. She's assigned to visit an American family. In the family's house Karen finds only an infirm old lady downstairs and a creepy kid trapped in a closet upstairs. Karen calls the authorities, but before they arrive an evil shadow emerges from a wall and kills the old woman and scares Karen into a trance.

The American version of the The Grudge drops the named title cards (thank goodness) and limits the action to the present day with a few flashbacks into the recent history of the house, where the Japanese movie skipped years into the future to no great effect. Karen is in much more of the film than her Japanese equivalent, and actually gets to fight back against the ghosts, however briefly. Don't expect her to get all Buffy on these apparition, or even all Daphne. Gellar is here for the name value, but anyone could have played this part.


"Let me in lady. I promise I'm not evil!"

However, adding a plot means that we become that much more aware of inconsistencies in the narrative. The Grudge leaves out a bit where the ghosts kills a security guard who has no connection to the house at all, so that's good, but at other points characters start acting the way characters only do in horror movies. A cop goes to house with the intent of burning it down, but stops before actually lighting the fuel when he hears a child in distress. He knows the house has ghosts, why is he so gullible? The American family arrives in the house and the mother goes into a trance and won't stop staring at a spot in the attic that's making creepy noises, but then the woman's son cheerfully informs the real estate agent that they'll take the house! Of course, they always wanted a haunted house. It will give mom something to do, I guess.

I noticed that The Grudge, besides ripping off the eye/hair imagery of Ringu (1998), also shared some elements with Tomie Replay (2000), like the main revelation coming from an increasingly frantic journal, and a female character meeting an authority figure on the roof of a building for no reason. In fact, Takashi Shimizu directed Tomie Replay. That's one advantage of being a Japanese director coming to Hollywood. You can redo all your old tricks and no one will know.

Posted: Mon - November 29, 2004 at      

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