REVIEW: The Grudge

The Grudge 2/10
‘They say that when someone dies in a powerful rage. A curse is made.’
Not only is the tagline to The Grudge grammatically incorrect, it really is not true. The Ring started the trend of Hollywood remaking genuinely creepy Japanese horror movies to squeeze a few pennies and because they were running out of ideas, this being illustrated by the fact in 2009, having remade all Japanese horror films, they are now ‘reimagining’ every American horror film.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, freshly de-buffyfied, is the blonde damsel in distress. She does a relatively good job at looking scared and making sure her breathing is quite heavy when required to imply tension.
Set in Japan, at the same sets as the original film, with the same director on board – oh, but there’s a famous English speaking woman, therefore, there is a difference!
Future victim walks around the house looking puzzled. After about 10 minutes, either a meowing boy or a groaning woman will pop out and presumably make ghost meat out of them. Repeat until the finale which makes no sense and is slightly ambiguous to imply a sequel! If bill Pullman commits suicide within 2 minutes of the film starting, you know it is going to be bad if Bill opted to off himself before uttering a single line and subjecting himself to this pile of rubbish.
The film boasts it contains ‘strong psychological terror’. Big words. Hmm, I can see how a boy ghost meowing and a woman ghost burping may be psychologically terrifying, but it hardly warrants a warning in an attempt to wheel in an audience. It even has the cheek to rip off The Ring in a ‘video tape sequence with a girl with long hair over face’ Hmm, where have I seen that before?
Ultimately The Grudge is not terrifying enough, if at all. As illustrated, the same scene is repeated and has the same conclusion. I recommend re-watching The Ring , or Buffy. Not this. If it is not good enough for Bill Pullman, it isn’t good enough for me.