Director Takashi Shimizu
Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jason Behr, Clea Duvall, Bill Pullman
Tagline It never forgives. It never forgets.
Genre Horror
Rating Firming to a 7 maybe 8 out of ten.
Reviewer Jethro
Plot
Karen is an American exchange student in Tokyo. In search of needed credits she takes on a home care assignment which involves more than she bargained for. Karen comes into contact with "the grudge"! Apparently if some one dies in anger they leave behind a "stain" which infects anyone who comes into contact with the place they died. Those cats don't go into that dark night without a fight l'm telling you.
As the body count mounts Karen investigates the curse placed on the house she unfortunatly had contact with. If this is sounding very Naomi then it's not. So just how well did a US remake of the Japanese original stack up ....
Review
"The whole time I was in that house I felt something was wrong. What happened there?" - Karen
This movie is interesting in a kind of a unique way. How well can a director remake his own movie for a foreign culture? Takashi Shimizu had already made the movie (Ju-On) for a Japanese audience and done one fine job with the finished product. Here he is attempting to recapture what made the Japanese original great, but for an alien culture with a very different take on the whole revenant concept. The venging ghost isn't as great an aspect in Western Horror as it is in Japanese horror. For us it's an interesting sub genre, rather than the main attraction it would appear to be for Japanese audiences in both print and film.
For your average horror fan Shimizu is fighting an uphill battle as we have all seen Ju-On already and know what's coming down. Grudge is pretty much a frame by frame remake of Ju-On with a few additional scenes and some slightly different camera angles. That new opening sequence surely does hit you between the eyes and gets this plane started down the runway in style. So we are aware of the Shower scene (still a freak out), the bed scene (OMG!!!!), and various ghosties making an appearance. That Shimizu still manages to ramp the scare factor up to warp factor 9 is probably an indication of how good this director is. One of the attractions of Grudge is that it's Ju-On for Idiots. I had big troubles working out what the heck was happening in Ju-On and didn't get the ending. The Grudge is fairly easy to follow and decipher without putting you on that big yellow bus. Concentrate on the movie and you'll figure it out, miss some scenes and it becomes confusing.
Grudge plays with timelines and does it skillfully. If you have seen Pulp Fiction then you'll get what l mean here. We have a whole slew of characters introduced who apparently have no connection to each other, but then through the course of the movie the connections become apparent even if we are jumping all over the calendar to make those connections. Shimizu films each story piece skillfully and you aren't aware of the seams as he stitches together the whole plot.
Shimizu surely does have a handle on camera work. His Tokyo is seen in harsh unfiltered light during the day and glooming darkness at night. The director even manages to have you jumping in a couple of places during broad daylight. From the opening scene to the final few frames, (another OMG moment), the director has an almost surreal atmosphere happening. The viewer is constantly on the edge of her/his seat with the possibilities that Shimizu plays with, and the hard results he shows.
The Grudge as a whole is a collection of strange sounds, macabre imagery, and an attempt to scare the panties off ya. Shimizu hasn't lowered his standards to Hollywood levels and seeks to first unnerve the viewer, and then to move the film into true horror. The tension is built and maintained from the get go and the director ensures the punter isn't given breathing space. If you want to catch a traditional horror movie then this is the movie for you.
Sarah Michelle Gellar was always going to be an interesting choice as lead. She has been pretty much role modelled by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and besides appearances in the Scooby Doo movies hadn't really taken a lead in a major release. Here she shows she can act and carries the role of Karen with great aplomb. Full respect to an actress prepared to do close ups with little to no makeup on. I for one even forgot she was "Buffy". Playing opposite Sarah, Jason Behr (Doug) comes across as fairly wooden in a non demanding role. I'm not entirely sure this character was needed, and he would appear to have been added to get Karen back to the house for the penultimate scene. Clea Duvall is adequite as Jennifer and pouts her way through her screen time. Sorry just didn't find her all that believable, and is an American female worker likely to be the last one leaving a Tokyo Office? Bill Pullman turns in a good performance as Peter, and is one actor getting better with every outing, if we exclude that Independance Day tripe.
For those concerned about ample lashings of gore and how this may affect the young adults in their care, then you needn't be overly concerned with this movie. Besides some scary scenes, and a way past freaky morphing face there's not a lot of blood on offer. Well okay there's a severed jaw, but that only takes a minute or so of screen time and previews a scene later in the movie.
The Japanese sure can be prudish when it comes to T&A. There's nothing happening here, even the much anticipated appearance of SMG in a short nurse's outfit doesn't happen, (okay that might have been one of my thoughts).
Christopher Young turns in a score which matches Shimizu's direction card for card. It's moody, creepy, and heightens the tension. Talk about the screws being turned.
Rent, buy, or Multiplex it (the summation)
Whatever you do go grab this movie. Okay people who freak at horror films and don't like them are exempt. This is a true horror ride filled with spills and thrills throughout it's 90 odd minutes. If you want to make a night of it hire The Grudge and Ju-On, make the popcorn, turn out the lights and get on down.
The Grudge is a good mix of Japanese horror with a Western view. Shimizu shows he is perfectly comfortable filming for both cultures, but retains his strong links to core horror concepts. In an age where gore and MTV level attention spans dominate the genre it's a breath of fresh air to have a director who understands that first and foremost a horror movie is a movie. If it fails as a movie then it completely fails regards of any "gnarly murder" scenes it might have. If American remakes of JHorror classics are all as good as this one, then bring them on!
** liked what it saw here and says go see the movie. Do yourself a favour and buy the DVD as it's jammed packed with special features and interesting insights. Heck go out today and rent Ju-On 2. Finally a good old fashion ghost story .... that simply raaasssspppss on your nerves. [Editor's note: That rasping sound used to good effect in the movie was a combination of Shimizu and others voices, and was the sound the director used to make as a kid. I would have gagged him at night time in all honesty].