The Grudge

Japanese director Takashi Shimizu makes a Hollywood remake of his own film ‘Ju-on: The Grudge’ and its rather like The Amityville Horrors with a Japanese edge since all kinds of nasty things have taken place in a modest little property in Tokyo. Naturally these evil spirits are out to make a nuisance of themselves until something is done about them. Perhaps they should have got the demolishers in and the raised the place to the ground, it might have been easier.

Instead, we get to watch a supposedly suspenseful film in which Sarah Michelle Gellar plays exchange student Karen, a trainee social worker who agrees to cover for a nurse, entering the mad house to look after an elderly American woman who is in a catatonic state (perhaps not surprising, given the weird noises coming from the wardrobe).

Naturally more folk have to die in suspicious circumstances as they visit the house, and Karen has to take on the supernatural elements (well Gellar is an experienced vampire clearer of course) and break the curse that has made this house such a major source of evil (what ever happened to Padres and exorcisms one asks ?).

The Grudge could have made an interesting horror film but it feels instead like one from a bygone age (where inexplicable bumps happen and nasty spirits get angry), so a certain extent, one tends to know who may survive and who won’t and logic takes a back seat in the bid to create suspense. Although this has been a box office hit in the States, that is not always a sign of quality movie-making of course and whilst it may be interesting to show Americans in a Japanese setting, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s talents are not fully exploited here. So a bit of a disappointment all in all, and certainly not the kind of film one might have hoped for, in terms of Hollywood talent taken to Japanese horror extremes. Its more horror-by-numbers really.

Matt Arnoldi