We have seen that the Japanese as a people tend be scared of things that we as Americans may not find all that frightening; Mothra, for instance, though able to level entire city blocks at will, simply left all of America clamoring for an equally large fly swatter. Maybe this is why \The Grudge,"" an English remake of a Japanese film, doesn't work. But to say that would only be scratching the surface of a much deeper problem.
""The Grudge"" follows Sarah Michelle Gellar, a nursing student who's studying abroad in Japan, as she enters a house haunted by some raging spirits and becomes cursed, like everyone who has entered before her. From there, the film seems to be a series of flashbacks of smaller characters entering the house and then a present-day look at their untimely end. To say anymore would ruin the story, and why waste what there is already so little of?
It's not entirely that the movie itself is an ill-conceived notion, because under the right circumstances the movie could've worked. It's not the actors in the movie, because we as an audience disregard the smaller players, assuming they're an appetizer of violence before the evil-doer gets to the main course of the movie's hero. However, Sarah Michelle Gellar, who is the character we all are supposed to fear for, can't ever really be identified with and is therefore just another lamb being led to the slaughter. And one wonders how Bill Pullman was ever talked into doing it. But even those are forgivable.
""The Grudge"" makes it seem like the era of the horror movie is dead. It's hard to believe, because there is still real quality in horror films, like the other big Japanese horror remake, ""The Ring."" ""The Grudge,"" though, is complacent to fall into old movie clich??s without even the slightest hint of trying to be original. The movie seems to be content with playing a shrill, haunting soundtrack in the background and hoping that the audience listens itself into horror, hopefully adding to the goose bumps once the movie actually begins the mayhem. But to achieve this effect, what gets presented on-screen must be scary, too. While an attractive woman going to investigate a noise in the attic may work once per movie, it most certainly will not work on the second time around. You can only have things jump at you so many times until it becomes so routine that any viewer can almost guess where the next one is coming. The genre of horror is not dead, but there is no place for rehashing a pile of old ideas and calling it a new movie.
""The Grudge"" was a huge hit in Japan before it was remade by its director, Takashi Shimizu, in English with American actors alongside Japanese. Given that he only speaks a few words of English, maybe Takashi felt uncomfortable working within the English language and the film suffered because of it. Maybe he felt that it had to be simplified to play to a larger American audience. Maybe, because of the rash of CGI-reliant movies, the ""sinister"" ghost with the big, cartoon-ish eyes doesn't scare us the way it would had we never seen something like it before. Whatever the reason is, ""The Grudge"" never achieves what could it have been if the premise only had been used correctly.
In the end, the only cursed people are those who are at the edge of their seat waiting for ""The Grudge 2.""
