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.
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