The Grudge: Not Exactly the Cat's Meow

The Grudge: Not Exactly the Cat's Meow
by Martell

This past week, my wife and I went and saw one of the most overpromoted films of the Halloween season--The Grudge. I'm sure everyone's seen commercials for this film by now, with the lurking black cloud/ghost, the hand coming out of Sarah Michelle Gellar's head in the shower, and the creepy little kid that sounds like a cat. Clearly the ad campaign did its job, since we couldn't wait to see this film. As it turns out, maybe our expectations were set too high, as The Grudge was a major disappointment.

It wasn't that it was a horrible film. The plot was decent enough, considering the genre. The acting wasn't over the top, like you would see in most bad horror films from the 80s (like Swamp Thing, C.H.U.D., or 90% of the Friday the 13th series). The CGI was both necessary and convincing, and the visual and audio effects were both fantastic. Even the choice of camera angles added to the overall effect, building the tension as the viewer waits for the next thing to jump into view. The reason I was disappointed with The Grudge is that, as I reflected on the film, I was left with the thought, "This film could have been REALLY good," and in my opinion, that is one of the worst crimes a film can commit against the viewer.

To the producers' credit, I think they tried to get it right. They kept a lot from the 2003 film version of Ju-on, upon which The Grudge is based, including the director (Takashi Shimizu), the actors who played the creepy kid (Yuya Ozeki) and the kid's mom (Takako Fuji), and most of the plot. They kept the technique of jumping back and forth between the past and present, which took a little time to get used to, but ended up being effective. They even went so far as to shoot the first half of the film to look exactly like the original (except with American leads). Where the producers ultimately went wrong was they kept too much of the original. There were a couple of major problems with Ju-on that they could have fixed, which instead they brought along into the new version.

The biggest problem with The Grudge is the number of unanswered questions. There are at least three major plot developments that were either glossed over or completely unexplained; exploring even one of these would have added to the film. In fact, the ending gets tied up so fast that the credits are rolling before you can even ask, "What just happened?" Considering that the film was only about 90 minutes long, it didn't have to be this way. Who knows, maybe leaving the viewer frustrated and confused was the desired result.

The other problem was the overuse of "startling" as a scaring technique. While it was done effectively (I was a bundle of nerves for the whole 90 minutes), since it was used continuously throughout the film, it began to lose its effect. I found myself thinking, "Okay, something's going to jump onto the screen any second now. Brace yourself." Because of this distraction, I wasn't able to "lose myself" in the movie, which is not only the mark of a great film, but absolutely essential for a good horror flick.

On a larger scale, these two problems with The Grudge may serve as an ominous sign of things to come. Producer Roy Lee, who also brought us The Ring, seems to be following the formula of finding a successful Asian film and then recreating it for the US. What he needs to recognize before it's too late is that the reason this worked for him in the past is because the original Ringu was a very good film. Many of the other films he has in production--The Eye, Chaos, Dark Water--have flaws similar to The Grudge, and if he insists on sticking to his formula, those movies are bound to be disappointments as well.

But here and now, The Grudge is an appropriate film for Halloween. Basically, it's your protypical haunted house story. In fact, I see several parallels between walking through your typical haunted house and watching this film. Both are dark and freaky. Both scare primarily through startling, and because of this, both do a great job of building tension. Yet both fail in creating any real terror. Oh, and one more--by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, both will have been completely forgotten.

Martell can be reached at martell@babblog.com.