The Grudge

Time can change our perception of movies. When The Grudge first came out, Roger Ebert said of the opening “I'm not sure how this scene fits into the rest of the movie, but then I'm not sure how most of the scenes fit into the movie.” Now, in the year 2015, with the benefit of Wikipedia I can easily figure out how the various scenes fit into the narrative...I simply don't care.

To summarize: A Japanese man named Takeo (Takashi Matsuyama) killed his wife Kayako (Takako Fuji) and son Toshio (Yuya Ozeki), because he read his wife's diary and realized she was having an affair with an American professor (Bill Pullman). After this, their spirits killed him, and the three of them haunt their home and attack anyone who comes inside.

I haven't seen the original Japanese film this is based on, but I'm torn on the decision to set this film in Japan. Rather than setting it in America, the creators apparently decided it would be easier to justify the use of English by having a bizarrely disproportionate number of Americans involved in the story. Not only was the Professor an American, but the next residents of the apartment were an American couple and the husband's aging mother (William Mapother, Clea Duvall, and Grace Zabriskie).

Even more bizarrely, after the couple are killed, the mother, apparently suffering from Alzheimer's, remains in Japan for some reason, being cared for by caretakers who come to see her daily. When her regular caretaker (Yoko Maki) is killed by the spirits, an American Exchange Student named Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is sent in her place. Even if the woman had no family back in the US, I strongly suspect that the Japanese government would send her to a nursing home in the States rather than pay for her care.

That's three independent trips to Japan by Americans who all end up as part of this story, to say nothing of Karen's boyfriend (Jason Behr). For the love of God if you're that determined to have Americans in .your film, just set the film in the US of A. I don't see anything difficult to culturally translate about “people who are murdered violently become violent ghosts.”

Putting that aside, however, I've tried hard to put my finger on why most of the scares don't work. My best guess is that it's a combination of factors. Most of the scares are fairly generic, and the movie is far too willing to show the ghosts. The build-up to the horror isn't especially tense, either.

All of these problems can be easily seen in the portrayal of Toshio: he seems to just exist around the house, and periodically say hello to someone, who typically doesn't even realize he's a ghost...oh, and he occasionally meows in the voice of his dead cat, who his father also killed. How are we supposed to be afraid of something treated with so little awe or reverence. Granted, most of the attacking is done by Kayako and Takeo, but having a ghost so open about his own existence cheapens the concept.

More significantly, though, the scares passed too quickly. The ghosts show up, then they attack...next scene. I found myself mentally comparing the film to The Woman in Black, a film that had a truly dazzling extended ghost attack (if you've seen the movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about). There were a number of sequences here that could have been frightening, if they'd been given proper time.

A perfect example of this is the famous shower scene. Karen is showering, and we see a hand start to emerge from the back of her head. She feels it, and...that's it. She's scared, but we're still anticipating. We're hungry for more, and we're not being fed.

The movie ends with Karen burning the house, and the implication that she inadvertently freed the evil. I intend to review the sequel (the first one, at least) next. I certainly hope it's an improvement over this entry.

There are worse films out there? Sure. But, honestly, this movie kind of made me wish I was watching them. I'd rather see amusing trash than this overly slow bore-fest.