“Do you have a grudge?” Can’t say that I do. Takashi Shimizu’s supernatural thriller The Grudge is a remake of the cult hit Japanese horror flick Ju-On: The Grudge, which was released in 2003. It is the first American remake of a foreign language film using the same director and many of the same cast members.
Karen, an American student (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Sarah Michelle Gellar) travels to Japan to study with her boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr). While working at a healthcare centre, she is sent on a house call that takes her to a spooky home. Shortly thereafter, eerie events begin to consume her life. Easy to guess where the plot goes from here. Girl is haunted… but must solve the mystery. As the Japanese legend goes, when a person dies in the grip of a powerful rage, their anger is trapped in the place they died. As a result, that location will forever be associated with death.
The Grudge is another drop in the already full bucket that is the American horror movie genre, and thus is entitled to have some bad scenes and clichéd lines. To be fair, one has to go into a film like this with a substantial amount of suspended disbelief, but scenes like the flashback where Karen sees the actions of the dead professor (Bill Pullman) seem ridiculously implausible.
The young Toshio, perhaps better described as “catboy” (check out the trailer, you’ll understand), gives a disturbing performance in most scenes, but has been given a confusing role. The association with the cat is not consistent or clear, making it almost comedic at times. There was giggling amongst the sneak preview crowd at Innis Town Hall, but despite all this, during the moments when I did jump, the rest of the theatre jumped with me.
If The Grudge can be compared to any recent horror movie, it would be The Ring, also inspired by a Japanese film. Both films feature a similar motif-long hair that obscures the face. This may seem like a shallow connection, but it alludes to much more. It is encouraging to see that films like these are moving away from the slice-and-dice formulas of the Screams and Last Summers of recent years. This is accomplished with the insight that what the audience doesn’t see is the most frightening and suspenseful of all. In the jaded world of cinematic blood and gore, a glimpse of a face under the covers can still keep me up at night.
It may not win any Oscars this year, but The Grudge is still worth a student’s dollar for a good fright. If you’re as lucky as I was, the whole theatre may even start up the foreboding noise of Kayako. My date for the evening said I was an easy target, but she’s all talk; she covered her eyes through all the scary parts.
