The Grudge

Ok. Before I start this let me just tell you that, like Joe, I hate horror films. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, maybe I just don’t scare easily, but I have not seen a horror film since Alien that has scared me in the least. I rarely jump in a theater, and most of the time I end up yawning and drifting off as the movie’s shallow bunch of characters make stupid and unrealistic choices.

Rating: 0.0001 out of 5

As example, a typical horror film scene: You’re in someone else’s dark, creepy house. You’re alone, and you hear strange noises coming from upstairs. You go to investigate but find no one around. (Did I mention, this is not your house?) So you decide, after snooping around for awhile, that there is no one in any of the rooms. But, of course you can’t stop there, go back downstairs and leave this mystery to the owner of the place. Instead, you are going to whip out your Zippo and take a peek up in the attic that you have to get to by crawling into a creepy closet while standing on a shaky box. (Not your house, did I mention this before?) Oh, and lest we forget, the whole while you are ransacking this person’s domicile, you are seeing and hearing strange noises and dark apparitions. What a shock when the moment you stick your head up in the attic, something bad happens.

Who in their right mind would do this in real life? The answer is No One, and thus is the reason why I hate horror films. They are not scary and they are normally written with the assumption that the audience has no brains. It’s insulting, and I normally leave them in a foul mood.

So? needless to say, when I decided to go see The Grudge I was not expecting much. Sarah Michelle Gellar-Prinze is the featured star, and since I am a huge Buffy fan I figured a nice shower scene or some other titillating shot would be worth my sitting through a two hour yawn-fest. No such luck, this movie was rated PG-13. So I then saw that Sam Rami directed it. I thought, ?Maybe this will make the movie bearable,? No such luck there either. This movie is a train wreck of bad writing, horrible characters, and unconvincing plot points. It is confusing, and completely transparent in its delivery.

Sarah is our main character. She is living in Japan and working for some company that takes care of old people, having something to do with school. (It’s never really explained, you don’t care) The story revolves around an old woman that is mostly catatonic and barely functioning – enter a young girl who plays out the afore mentioned horror film scene above – and our stage is set. A typical ghost story, set in a creepy house, people getting killed by making stupid choices and refusing to enlist the help of anyone for fear they will be considered crazy. I would tell you the details of this film, but it would be a waste of your time. Take every movie made in the last 4 years and you have it. Take the evil ghost and its basic story from The Ring, add the sound track from Fear.com, shake in a bit of plot from just about every other film made, and you’ve got The Grudge. And good luck trying to follow what is going on in this movie. The individual stories jump back and forth from character to character and even backward and forward in time. If you go, be sure to bring something to write with so you can take notes. You’ll need it to understand the final explanation as to why all this is happening. Hint: it has to do with the fact that they are in Japan, and that the Japanese believe that when someone dies in a bad way, the house becomes bad. (Or something like that, I didn’t have a pen!) ‘Course, that is only because it is in Japan. If this was anywhere else… who knows.

I left this movie wondering who would watch this film, then it dawned on me that this movie was not made for you and me. If you are a teenage girl, this movie will scare the pants off you, and if you are a teenage boy, make sure you take your girlfriend to see it. As for the rest of us, wait for it to come out on DVD, then rent Ernest, Scared Stupid instead. You’ll get more out of it in the end.