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This Film On

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The Grudge

(2004)

90 min. Columbia Pictures. Director: Takashi Shimizu. Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amber Tamblyn, Arielle Kebbel, Teresa Palmer, Jennifer Beals.

Takeshi Shimizu's two versions of The Grudge--the original, Japanese Ju-On: The Grudge and the American remake The Grudge--both have relative merits, but they are decidedly underwhelming films. The archetypal haunted house story might be more effective as a campfire story which takes ten minutes to tell or a fair attraction which takes ten minutes to walk through, but as a 90-minute movie, it's a crushing bore with a handful of inventive shocks.

Shimizu's American remake throws American actors--most recognizably Sarah Michelle Gellar and Bill Pullman--into the same steadfastly somnabulistic acting style and character-deficient plot as the original. The presence of Pullman (Lost Highway) and Grace Zabriskie (Laura Palmer's mother from Twin Peaks) signals Shimizu's admiration for David Lynch, who knows something Shimizu doesn't: how to make long lulls and minimalism magnetic instead of boring.

Where rage-filled murder takes place, the rage stays behind and kills more people: hence, the grudge. The unresolved victims of past murders linger as wraiths and poltergeists, consuming hapless victims--like Gellar's social worker Karen--who are unfortunate enough to step into the haunted house. William Mapother, Clea Duvall, and the original cast's Yuya Ozeki and Takako Fuji are among the other victims. Since the remake, penned by Stephen Susco, likewise takes place in Tokyo, a mildly intriguing stranger-in-a-strange-land element pervades the absurd fatalism of the American characters.

The American The Grudge streamlines the "plot" and picks up the pace (believe it or not), but the first film's willful confusions threw Ju-On: The Grudge more scarily off-balance. Here, the rules are clear: you go in the damn(ed) house, you die. Eventually, the grudge is gonna get ya. With genuine tension out the window, The Grudge becomes a bland waiting game between the good parts: freaky ghosts appearing out of nowhere and imaginatively consuming victims.