Takashi Shimizu broke such important genre ground in 2002 with his seminal hit “Ju-On” that it exploded internationally, creating the so-called J-Horror boom shortly afterward. The impact of that film was so great that it spawned scores of imitators in Japan from those wanting to cash in on the success of the film but also a remake from Shimizu himself in 2004, filmed in America with several sequels following up on the original. That film also started off a wave of imitators where various local and international directors helmed remakes of the films from the original J-Horror boom in Japan until it petered out at the end of the decade. Now, at the start of the next decade, director Nicolas Pesce attempts to provide his own spin on the material with yet another take out now in theaters that has little reason to be watched.
Following a series of strange incidents, Det. Muldoon (Andrea Riseborough) and her partner Detective Greco (Joel Marsh Garland) are tasked with looking into the deaths of several victims who died several months previously. Looking further into the incidents, they discover that the fates of previous residents, realtor Peter Spencer (Jon Chou) and his pregnant wife Melinda (Betty Gilpin) as well as Faith Matheson (Lin Shaye) and her husband William (Frankie Faison) who have all died after having lived in the cursed house. Determined to try to help those who are still alive being affected by the ghostly spirits that seem to follow her everywhere, she tries to understand the origins of the curse in order to stop the deadly incidents happening around her.
Overall, there isn't much to like with “The Grudge.” Among the few main positives featured is the appropriately creepy atmosphere that usually comes from the genre. The use of jump-scares throughout, and especially in the first half, come off nicely from director Pesce, focusing on the time-honored tradition of cutting exactly to show the ghost grabbing a person's limbs or standing unaware behind the victim. As well, there's the recreation of one of the genre's signature scares which is thankfully given a change-over by switching the gender of the afflicted, making for a fine jump-scare. These are enhanced by the generally creepy scenarios present, from the discovery of the skeletons inside the house while Muldoon begins looking into the incidents or sudden flash-shocks of the different spirits standing next to people. With some grisly make-up work on the ghosts and some bloody deaths on display, that's about all that works for this one.
“The Grudge” has a few major problems. The greatest flaw is the completely convoluted and discordant storyline from writers Nicolas Pesce and Jeff Buhler that never knows what kind of focus it wants to keep. The majority of the film is spent on Det. Muldoon investigating the strange deaths around her as a means of overlooking her personal struggles and discovering the fate of the couple who lived in the house previously. This ends up causing a great deal of confusion by jumping back-and-forth in time to their encounters with the ghost as well as the present-day officers. To then tie in a third time-period to help explain the character motivation behind the crazy old-woman ends up adding to the confusing narrative. This inability to stay focused on a singular incident is incredibly maddening and highlights a weak central story about the cursed house where it could've streamlined everything into a tighter structure.
The other main problem with “The Grudge” is the complete boredom that arises from this one. This spends so little time attempting to be scary that it sometimes fails to even register as a genre picture with all the time spent getting to focus on the families in the various timelines. The ghosts are rendered such little screentime in favor of these extended scenes of everyone living unaware of what's about to happen to them or looking at video evidence files of the past, that it completely fails to generate any kind of suspense or tension. Nothing about any of the characters makes them likable, and since we spend so much time with them instead of showcasing the ghostly attacks, the film falls flat and dull at every opportunity. Had this been more structurally coherent, the film might've helped slightly but that doesn't overcome any of the other flaws on display.
Filled with logic problems, storyline confusion and a general lack of scares for long stretches of the running time, “The Grudge” offers up very little redeeming or watchable elements outside of a few choice segments scattered throughout here. Only the most die-hard franchise aficionados will find anything of value with this one, while general genre fans have little need to see the film.
“The greatest flaw is the completely convoluted and discordant storyline”.
So it’s exactly like the original, then?
I despise those GRUDGE movies. They’ve made about ten of them and none of them are close to being good. Unless, that is, you have a particular liking for burping ghosts and semi-naked Japanese boys.
Nicholas Pesce has made two outstanding, highly disturbing movies so far. It’s disappointing that yet another promising horror director who has been ‘Blumhouse-ed’ into making generic mall-horror crap like this.
The original’s made sense, though. You knew how it all ended up at the end of the film and where we were in each storyline. This one jumps around so randomly to each of the various people living in the house that there’s nothing remotely coherent about the storylines or why they’re jumping around to them. Plus, there was a purpose to doing that in the original, it told about how the curse was spreading everyone who stepped into the house. Here, it’s doing so simply to keep up the franchise’s style because there’s so little about the franchise involved elsewhere in the film.