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What's the Story, Mornin' Glory?
The Grudge
(2004)
"The Grudge is the curse of one who dies in the grip of a powerful rage. Those who encounter this murderous supernatural curse die and a new one is born, passed from victim to victim in an endless, growing chain of horror." Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar) followed her boyfriend to Japan so that she could be with him when he went to study architecture abroad. While in Japan, Karen studies and volunteers at a care center where they provide at home nurse care. On her day off she stops by to pick up a book that she had left at the care center. One of the nurses Yoko (Yoko Maki) hasn’t been to work in a couple days and isn’t answering her phone. This is the perfect opportunity for Karen, especially because it’s an English speaking home. When Karen gets there the house is trashed and there’s food wrappers all over the house. She finds the sick grandma lying on the floor and Karen picks her up and cleans her. While she’s cleaning up the house she heads upstairs and is startled by a cat noise. She follows it to a closet that has been taped shut. She pulls off the tape and finds a cat and a little boy trapped inside. Later, after calling her supervisor to report the child, she hears the old woman talking to someone. Karen lays the woman down and when she backs up she sees someone, or something, standing over her.
Karen’s supervisor, Alex (Ted Raimi) arrives to the house Karen called from later that night. He calls the police when he discovers Karen cowering in a corner and the old lady dead. Karen is taken to the hospital and is questioned by a Japanese detective. She leaves the hospital later; still shaken by the girl she saw hovering over the old lady. She meets up with her boyfriend and heads home, but she can’t shake the feeling that something followed her from that house.
You Learn Something New Everyday...
 If no one answers the door, let yourself in.
Whenever you see a torn picture in a stranger's house, piece it back together.
American girls are pushy.
All places in Japan have poor lighting.
It's okay to call people from someone else's abandoned house.
Sometimes you're so filled with rage you have to kill a cat.
Zing!
Nothing really comes to mind.
Simon Says...
The American version of The Grudge came off as a watered version of the original. I read somewhere that they made two versions, an R version and a PG-13 version. The PG-13 version had toned down the “disturbing images” (like, deaths and probably the girl itself) and it tested better with audiences. That’s stupid. A scary movie is meant to be scary. Someone who goes to see a horror flick is not there to sit back and relax. They want to jump and they want to be horrified. However, if you haven’t seen Ju-on, you don’t really know what you’re missing and I think the movie comes off as better.
It was really distracting to watch the movie because half of it was in Japanese and the other half was in English. I’m a seasoned veteran of reading subtitles (dating way back when my Dad and I watched foreign flicks together) and I found it irritating when they switched back and forth. I can’t imagine what someone who hates different languages or isn’t used to splitting their attention feels. It’s hard to be terrified when you have to switch between reading and listening. The fact that they made the family who lives in the cursed house American was really cumbersome. They should’ve kept the cast either mostly American or mostly Japanese. The American family is so out of place. They truly look like fishes out of water. I hated how much the wife complained about not understanding the language. I don’t know if you’re supposed to feel sympathy towards her, but you have to figure that they knew they were going to move to Japan ahead of time. Pick up a language book. She whines that when she got lost she couldn’t find anyone who spoke English to help her. Wow. You are in another country.
The plot as a whole was the same. Kudos for whomever decided to get the original director to direct it again. There were a few differences that bugged me because either they were cool or had a lot to do with the plotline. They leave out a few deaths like the detective’s assistant (who is one of the first to die in the Japanese version, but is one of the last people alive in the American version) and they cut the detective’s daughter and her three friends out completely. Not killing the detective’s assistant was stupid because he was in the house and the whole point of the movie was that anyone who comes in contact with it dies. They just killed the whole plot right there. The detective’s daughter and her three friends was a cool part of the story. They intertwined supernaturally with the detective’s own story. This is a little fuzzy in my own mind, but I thought the woman who was killed (the grudge lady) was killed by her husband on the false pretense that she was in love another man. That’s why the grudge was created because she was falsely accused and then killed for something she didn’t do. In the American version, she writes in a journal about how she’s in love with this American professor (Bill Pullman) and is actually stalking him. The husband finds this and kills her. That’s slightly more justified…you’d think she wouldn’t become a curse because she slightly deserved it. The main character in the American version doesn’t really die. I think you’re supposed to assume she died, but technically she didn’t. If she did, she died in the hospital after identifying her boyfriend’s body. In the Japanese version she dies in the house. I wonder why they didn’t spend the extra 5 minutes explaining what happened to the grudge lady in the first place. In the Japanese version the husband slits her throat and leaves her to die in the room that’s connected to the attic, that’s why she makes that weird sound. Then he leaves her body in the attic. He doesn’t drown his son. I think he kills him some other way. The American version left all this out.
This movie proves that filmmakers think that people won’t get scared if there’s too much light in the scene. The Japanese version hardly has any “no lights working,” super dark scenes. Everything is well lit. In this one all the houses are really dimly lit and you practically need a flashlight during the day. In all, I preferred the Japanese version. On it’s own, the American version is pretty good. It had some really creepy scenes that made me jump and the grudge girl was still really scary. If you don't know anything of Ju-on, then you’re good. But, if you’re a horror fan you may still find it pretty watered down. I don’t know why filmmakers are afraid to make scary movies. Isn’t that the point? If you like...American remakes, creepy, disjointed movements, little boys that meow, and hands that come out of your head when you shower then this is the flick for you. As for us...we give The Grudge
That Wasn't so Bad Was It?
I was left Feeling: Unimpressed
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