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The Grudge - 10/22/04 - PG-13 - 91m
Sarah Michelle Gellar - Kare Davis
Jason Behr - Doug
Ryo Ishibashi - Detective Nakagawa
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Screenplay by: Stephen Susco
Studio: Sony Pictures
Official
Website
JEF
I guess whenever a studio puts out a scary film around the end of October people will go see it. I had high hopes for this film, as I really liked “The Ring”. This was basically an attempt to bring those viewers in, who also enjoyed “The Ring”.
Storyline: When a person dies a tragic death it leaves a curse behind. This curse overtakes all those that enter the area. A young woman Kare (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a substitute nurse/caregiver. She goes to a house to take care of an elderly woman, after the other caregiver doesn’t show up for work the next day. As she enters the house, she realizes there is something “spooky” going on.
I won’t go into too much detail here, as it’s just a horror movie. I liked the concept of the movie. It could have been expanded upon if you ask me, but they didn’t.
The film relies on a few “boo” tactics, which didn’t really bother me. Sometimes in a horror movie they over use this tactic. This was just about the right amount. Instead this movie relied a lot on suspense.
The danger of a film relying on suspense is that it can become boring or tedious. For me that’s what this movie did. There were so many drawn out setups that by the time the payoff came it was so expected that it didn’t come as a shock. Also the music was a horrible give-away that something “scary” was about to happen.
The movie played around with the timeline of events, but this became more of a distraction than a creative ploy in telling the story.
I did enjoy some of the visual effects, and thought the one scene that they show in the trailer of the fingers coming out of her hair was really creepy, but these few scenes were not enough to warrant sitting through this movie. There were several of the scary scenes that to me just seemed comical. Not the thing you want your audience to feel while watching a horror movie.
It was clear that the movie was trying to simulate the same feeling as “The Ring”, but just didn’t measure up.
I also can't really see how the title of the movie "the grudge" relates to the film itself. I think it relates more to how you feel after seeing this movie.
Jef
PS> Not that this is really related to the movie, but perhaps helped to ruin the experience… the theatre that we went to (the Atco Multiplex) had a horrible sound problem with the speakers. For the length of the entire movie there was a loud buzzing coming from the speakers. I know I should have got up to complain, but you know, sometimes it’s just not worth the effort. I’m sure I’d tell some teenage punk who couldn’t care less that there was a problem in the theatre, nor could they have probably fixed the problem. So I just sat there and tried to tune it out. We all heard the buzz during the trailers, but were hoping it would go away once the movie started.
