Day 2 of 2 in my series of “Watching The Grudge Movies Because I Feel Like It” segment has brought me to the most recent iteration in the J-horror series, written and directed by Nicolas Pesce and starring Andrea Riseborough, John Cho, and Demian Bichir.
In what isn’t quite a remake, not quite a sequel, the titular curse has spread abroad to the United States after an American caretaker tangentially related to the events of the first film brings it home with her. The central idea behind the “grudge” is that an act of violence and rage can pollute a location, spreading death to anyone who comes in contact with it. With the caretaker’s house as a pivot point, The Grudge erratically switches between three stories: a real estate agent (Cho) selling the house, an older couple that purchase the house, and a newly-widowed cop (Riseborough) investigating a dead body with ties to the house.
The Grudge is a perfect example of a January horror movie, starting the year off with a soggy thump. It’s a half-assed attempt to rekindle interest in a franchise that in itself only saw success because of a long-passed fad. Rather than building actual tension, instead we get cheap and fleeting jump scares, and at times even the characters seem confused about what has happened and what they’re supposed to be doing.
I can kind of see what they were going for. One of the more outstanding elements in the original film was its success in weaving together several characters’ stories around a central idea. Unfortunately, this time it feels more like three separate films hastily and sloppily edited together without regard for consistent tone or even a clear narrative thread. Riseborough’s scenes feel more like a frame story to contain the others while the elderly couple’s story comes off as overly melodramatic to the point where it’s unintentionally hilarious. Suffice to say it was pretty much the only enjoyment I got out of the film.
At the risk of comparing the film too much to its predecessor (it’s still fresh in my head), another thing that really bugged me was the film’s obsession with latching on to certain elements of the original without justifying bringing them back. For example, the death-rattle-throat-gurgle (for lack of a better way to describe it) noise Kayako made in the original is all over this movie. Every ghost makes the same noise seemingly out of tradition or perhaps simply just to have something recognizable tying it to the original. It gets very old, very quick.
The Grudge is an eternal slog of watching people wallow in misfortune until a croaking ghost eventually either forces them to commit further acts of violence or just outright kills them. The curse in the film spreads from person to person, perpetuating a seemingly endless cycle of misery spiraling outward from the epicenter of a horrible event. With this in mind, the movie is 100% on-brand.
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