The Grudge

The Grudge

Starring Andrea Riseborough, Demian Bichir, John Cho, Betty Gilpin

Directed by Nicolas Pesce

The 2000s saw an influx of American remakes of Japanese horror films (often known as J-Horror) with varying results.  Films like "The Ring" managed to exceed its "Ringu" counterpart, while others like "Dark Water," "Pulse," "The Eye," "Shutter," "The Echo," and "One Missed Call" fell short of expectations.  "The Grudge," based off the Japanese horror film "Ju-On," falls somewhere near the middle.  Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, the film centered on an American nurse working in Tokyo who runs afoul of a curse known as Ju-On: when someone dies in the grip of anger or sorrow, an evil curse is created, and whoever steps foot in the home will take the spirit home with them and haunt them forever.  The film managed to make over $187 million dollars worldwide, and spawned two sequels (one which was direct-to-DVD), and everyone thought the franchise was long dead.

However, like the curse itself, it can't seem to stay dead.  Now, eleven years after "The Grudge 3," director Nicholas Pesce decided to re-invigorate the franchise with "The Grudge," a film that's technically not a remake (it takes place from 2004-2006, between the first and second films), but also a film that no one asked for.  The main selling point was the fact that this was the "R-rated film that the fans have asked for," but to my recollection absolutely no one asked for it (FYI, "The Grudge 3" was also rated R).

Spanning three years, "The Grudge" is 90 minutes of scare-free jump scares that drag on at a snail's pace, offering multiple stories that could've worked well if it had been turned into a new trilogy (but I guess you can be thankful that it wasn't), and while the atmosphere was decent, it's not enough to save this from becoming a total disaster.

In 2004, a young mother working in a house in Tokyo returns home to her husband and young daughter, and the curse follows her home with her.  One year later, realtor couple Peter (John Cho) and Nina (Betty Gilpin) Spencer are trying to sell the house, while Nina deals with upsetting news about her unborn child.  Then in 2006, new police detective Muldoon (Andra Riseborough) is investigating the strange death of a woman in a car, leading her to the same house where the mother murdered her family years earlier, and whose partner (Demian Bichir) won't enter due to the fact that his former partner did and went insane.  Then there's also the story of William (Frankie Faison) and Faith (Lin Shaye) Matheson, who moved into the house and is dealing with Faith's debilitating illness, where William brings in assisted suicide care nurse Lorna (Jacki Weaver) to ease Faith's journey to the next world, all the while being haunted by the grudge spirit.

It might sound like a lot, and it is.  Like I said, if they had taken each separate story and made it their own film, it actually might've worked, but since Pesce decided to cram them all into one 90 minute film like a 400 pound woman trying to fit into a size one dress, it just becomes bloated, nonsensical, and lacking any sort of character development or even cohesive story.

Each story, on its own, has some very good merits to it, and each one has downright real-life terrors of their own.  Peter and Nina's unborn child has a life-threatening disease.  Detective Muldoon and her young son move to a new town three months after her husband dies of cancer that her son was there for.  Faith and William deal with Faith's downward spiral to dementia and madness.  All of these are enough to invite an unwelcome spirit into their home, but when told together, each one is given a Wikipedia-style story that leaves you feeling nothing but boredom as you pretty much know how it'll all turn out.

To that end, there's absolutely no earth-shattering twists or turns, but rather a straight narrative delivered with multiple jump scares that were probably designed to incite fear, but all I heard from the audience (as well as myself) was laughter at the lunacy of it all.  It wasn't at all frightening, and it seemed that they abandoned the atmospheric, spiritual cat-and-mouse game that made the first remake decent and use their R-rating to replace that with gory images galore.  Jump scares and gore for the sake of gore doesn't a good horror film make, and that's unfortunately what we got here.  I'm still wondering how a film like this managed to get two Academy Award-nominated actors (Demian Bichir and Jacki Weaver), one former comedic actor who gave a terrific dramatic performance in 2018's "Searching" (John Cho), and the latest horror legend in Lin Shaye to participate in this film, let alone anyone else.  Maybe the curse blinded them from the horrors they would undertake in making this forgettable re-remake.

Trapped in its own curse of too many stories, reliance on jump scares, and overuse of gore, "The Grudge" serves as proof that some films shouldn't get remade...or in this case, re-remade.

The Score: D-