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Lost in Translation
‘The Grudge’ sticks to the ABC’s of terror
by Clint Casey
The criteria for greenlighting a big-budget scary movie must be remarkably low. A few key elements are necessary, but a plot wouldn’t appear to be one of them. Providing that a concept’s quota for creepy children, shower scenes and mysterious phone calls is satisfied, it’s well on the way to a theater. The Grudge, this year’s obligatory Halloween offering, exceeds the essentials for spookiness and adds oodles of jumpiness.
Similar to The Ring, the movie was originally a Japanese hit (Ju-on: The Grudge) reimagined and reshot with a lead actress more appealing to American audiences. However, The Grudge maintained its original director. Unfortunately, it ended up sacrificing sequences in the original film in exchange for a PG-13 rating.
In the movie, prospective caregiver Kare Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is adjusting to life in Tokyo with her live-in boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr). However, when a member of the hospital staff disappears on a house call, Kare is recruited to stand in until she resurfaces. When Kare arrives at the house, she finds it in disarray, newspapers strewn about and the patient Emma, an elderly woman with suspected delusions of grandeur, silent and unresponsive.
While Emma is catatonic, Kare snoops around the house, looking for an explanation for its disheveled state. In a neglected upstairs bedroom, she finds a closet door taped shut and hears curious noises coming from within. Inside, Kare discovers an apparition and experiences her first encounter with the “grudge.”
The premise revolves an old legend that “When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born.” Apparently, the curse either drives its victims into maddening terminal dementia or briefly materializes long enough to bump off innocent bystanders, dependent on its mood.
The movie perpetually shifts its narrative from present to past to bizarre grudge-induced hallucinations, which is not so much confusing as pointless and irritating. And the paper-thin plot doesn’t benefit from jumps in the space-time-paranormal continuum.
Its clockwork dependency on surprising the audience with unpredictable scares becomes expected and gratuitous. However, the initial shocks make The Grudge a fine date movie, providing an excuse about every eight minutes to grab the arm of the person beside you.
The formulaic elements essential for Hollywood horror are countless: black cats, crazy people, shrill music, twitchy ghosts caught on camera, a slight twist ending primed for sequel treatment. To its credit, The Grudge manages to keep excessive gore to a bare minimum.
After seven seasons on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar’s turn as the vulnerable twentysomething nurse is hard to swallow. She’ll always be Buffy Summers, and anything less than a proper undead ass-kicking is implausible and nauseating. Regrettably, the remainder of the cast serves as forgettable props in the muddled tapestry of terror.
Taken as a whole, The Grudge doesn’t have enough in its arsenal to keep viewers awake at night, but it does have just enough recognizable clichÉs to make for a scary flick at its most comfortable.
October 28, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 44
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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