| The Grudge (2004) Dir: Takashi Shimizu Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Bill Pullman, Jason Behr, Grace Zabriske, Clea DuVall, KaDee Strickland, Ted Raimi, William Mapother, Ryo Ishibashi Rated PG-13, Approx: 90 minutes (Unrated Version runs 97 minutes) A Columbia Pictures Release |
| Matt's Review: ** (out of 5) |
| Reviewed by Matt Serafini 10/29/04 |
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| The basic gist of The Grudge can be surmised in the preceded text (bear with me, I'm paraphrasing here): When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. Now, this curse is powerful enough to linger well after the begrudged have passed on, so unfortunately a lot of innocent people are going to suffer. With that said, that's the entire plot you're going to get with this film (I'm not counting the brief exposition in the film's final reel), one that isn't terribly scary or interesting at all. The Grudge, as we all know, is an American remake of a successful Japanese film titled Ju-On The Grudge. Now, what we have here is arguably the most senseless kind of remake insofar as that it's incredibly similar to its source film. It uses the same director (Shimizu in fact, has helmed this same story several times, the first being the television incarnation titled, Ju-On The Curse-does this guy need to move on of what?), it's setting remains Japan and the story is essentially the same thing only with a slightly more linear thread that comes in the guise of Sarah Michelle Gellar as the heroine. The lovely Mrs. Gellar plays Karen, a social worker living with her boyfriend (Jason Behr) whose studying abroad in Japan. When a fellow social worker goes missing, Karen is sent to a mysterious house to care for an ailing woman (Grace Zabriske whom we call know and love as Mrs. Palmer from Twin Peaks) and stumbles upon the deadly curse. As an audience, we're then treated to several uninteresting flashbacks with lots of dull characters that fall beneath the rage of the curse. One of the biggest problems with this film was having Shimizu direct it again. For the majority of the length, it feels as though we�re watching a somewhat castrated version of the original. Many of the best scenes have been jettisoned and what we're left with doesn't add up to anything impressive (and American actors cast in every major part for a film set entirely in Japan is baffling), and because of Shimizu's involvement here, I was not only constantly reminded of how superior the original version was in terms of scares, but how worthless this version was for refusing to do anything new or interesting with the already established material. Much like its predecessor, this is far from a character or plot driven film, and once you realize that all you're left with is the shocks and scares, the film had better pull them off big time. Unfortunately, The Grudge never amounts to more than several characters stumbling around dark corridors, scenes ending with a 'scary' face popping into frame accompanied by an unpleasant groaning (or in a few cases, meowing, and yes, it sounds every bit as silly as you'd expect). If you've seen the trailer for this one, unfortunately you've seen all of its best moments, and in far less time than the interminable 96 minutes it would take should you actually sit down to watch it. For what it's worth, the film features a good cast although it proceeds to waste the talent of each and every performer. Sarah Michelle Gellar is a great actress who finds herself in bad role after bad role. I was hoping this film would do for her what The Ring did for Naomi Watts, but no dice. Here, her character isn't given a chance to shine and her part requires little more of her than backing away from things slowly while looking mortified. As for the rest of the cast, well, they're given even less to do. Arguably the film's greatest success is inventing the clich� of character after character leaving work very late at night only to succumb to malevolent curse when nobody else is around. The viewer would probably do well to remember that the next time their boss asks them to put in a little overtime. Unfortunately, that's what KaDee Strickland and Ted Raimi's parts amount to here, and another of my favorites, Bill Pullman doesn't even look like he's acting, he just stumbles around two scenes and collects a paycheck. In the part of Gellar's boyfriend, Jason Behr comes off the worst, not because he's bad, but his dialogue is so terrible that most of the time it borders on embarrassing. This is a bad film, in part because it's a bore and partly because it's utterly pointless. Not even in the sense that it's so much like the original, but in that if offers up nothing in the way of scares, character or plot. Perhaps if they bothered to make us care weather or not Sarah Michelle Gellar survives the proceedings, or detailed her struggle to find a way to break the curse, than I could've forgiven this one for being 100% repetitive. As it is, it's ineffective in every way and amounts to little more than a real mess of a film that succeeds only in one thing, squandering away all of its potential. |
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| Sarah Michelle Gellar (above) is just some of the wasted talent in Columbia Pictures' The Grudge-now available on DVD... |