REVIEW: The Grudge 2 (2006)

I just so love when I have to look at a Wikipedia article right after watching a damn movie just to remember what happened. Usually that doesn’t happen, because most movies aren’t so damn unmemorable that I’d have to resort to such embarrassing maneuvers. But it never seems to happen unless I’m watching a Grudge movie. And lo and behold, this week I’m reviewing another Grudge movie! I can’t remember a damn thing about the first one, and now I’m supposed to review this piece of shit. Whatever am I supposed to do when I can’t recall what happened in a movie I’m reviewing? Eh, I’ll figure it out.

Director: Takashi Shimuzu

Starring: Amber Tamblyn, Edison Chen

IMDb

I just don’t even get this series, because I literally can’t recall ever meeting anyone who liked it. How do you have a franchise when you have zero fans? Who is this marketed to? It’s certainly not supposed to be entertaining. The story isn’t that good, and the characters are cardboard cutouts. The directing is a big mess and whatever atmosphere it’s trying to conjure up is squandered on the weak-ass pacing. There. That’s my review; do I have to say anything else?

…………yes, yes I do.

The movie starts off with a cheerful reminder that getting sizzling hot bacon grease poured on you…is painful. And getting hit in the head with the pan the grease came from…is even more painful.

There's a hell of a flip book for you.

Then we switch to a credit sequence filled with lots of blacks and reds, because it wouldn’t really look good in all pinks and light blues. The first actual scene is about some high school girls in Japan, except only one is actually even Asian, and of course they all speak perfect English with no trace of an accent. Are you even trying, movie? Literally the first few minutes already give the impression – the very right impression – that the makers just didn’t give a crap.

These three are normal teenage girls, which means they talk about each others’ looks and have an equal propensity for urban legends and supernatural folklore. Like most teenage girls, you know. They go to an old house which one of the girls says is haunted and everyone who goes in becomes cursed. So, what…they just walk home and do their homework now, right?

"Like, seriously, don't you guys know that creepy haunted houses are IN this year? All the preppy girls are doing it now."

No, of course they go in! The two mean girls lock the one nice one up in a closet and laugh at her. The joke is on them, though, when the door is really locked for real and the ghost comes out! But luckily the ghost has become incompetent and lazy since the first movie, and cannot even catch one of them to pull into Hell.

After that we see a mother who you know is sick because she’s filmed in really generic sick people shots with dramatic lighting and perfect hair and makeup despite being, apparently, sick as a dog. And coughing. Don’t forget lots of coughing.

She has "movie disease." In which you cough sometimes and can't move much, but otherwise look OK. Highly contagious in films that don't feel like actually trying.

Apparently this is the mother of Buffy Michelle Gellar from the first film, who is the only person with talent in either one. There’s also a sister who apparently isn’t even speaking to Gellar anymore. Now that Gellar is in the hospital and wanted for murder, the mother asks the sister, Aubrey, to go over and bring Gellar back from Japan.

Being an absolutely brilliant and cultured person, Aubrey just talks in English only to the nurses at the desk and doesn’t even try to use their language or help them understand. Luckily for her, a creepy journalist is waiting nearby and acts as a translator. Aubrey gets up to see Gellar but Gellar sits up and gets mildly excited, so they come in and just tie her down to a table full-body style…bit of an overreaction there…

Downstairs, she finds out that creepy journalist guy, is a creepy journalist guy. I’m not exactly sure what story he thinks he’s getting out of this. Maybe it’s just because I don’t remember the first one, but it seems like it’d have to be a slow news day for this to really be worthy of attention. Then outside, Gellar falls prey to the old bad horror movie tactic of dying in her second scene and really only being there to add a popular name to the opening credits:

Yeah...not quite Buffy Season 5 death, is it?

Then we switch to Chicago, Illinois – SERIOUSLY? JUST STOP! STOP RANDOMLY SWITCHING LOCATIONS AND ADDING STORYLINES! Is it that hard, Grudge 2?! Is it that hard just to stick to one story and make us care about the characters? Or do you seriously think that the best way to get us invested is to just keep piling on more and more worthless shit stories until we’re too desensitized to care that your movie is a big pile of nothing?!

But alright, fine, I’ll play along – I’d really love to see how they’re going to try to integrate this with the previous storyline in Japan. The answer is, they really don’t, because there’s really no story to this movie when you get down to it. The Chicago story features a little kid who just loves to look around and act angsty. He discovers that the next door neighbors bring home someone wearing a hoodie so you can’t see their face aaaaand…that’s about all his story is.

Please, that's supposed to set off our warning alarms? I bet half of these shitty apartments have mysterious, shady looking, hood-wearing strangers in them.

Meanwhile, one of the girls from the beginning goes to a ‘love motel’ with her boyfriend where she ends up getting pulled into a mirror, you know, like in Mirrors 2 or something. But the comparisons to Mirrors 2 end there…not that you’d really want there to be more. Eugh. Choosing between that movie and this one is kind of like choosing whether to drink sewer water or your own piss.

So the creepy journalist and Aubrey partake in…okay, let’s just be honest: every. Single. Horror movie cliché. Ever! I’m serious. It’s hard to even describe how generic this is. It's like they took the worst parts of every mid-2000s super serious ghost horror movie and put them all together, and removed all semblance of story and actual scares. Like a pot-luck of terribleness! You’ve got the scenes of them looking around for clues in books:

Reading books equals smart plot? I don't think so.

You’ve got the scenes of them prowling around in dark shadowy places with contemplative looks on their faces, while dramatic music plays:

Seriously, TURN ON THE LIGHTS. I can't see anything, you morons! How is this seedy darkly-lit garbage supposed to be intimidating? A little, sure, but this much? It's just overkill.

To add insult to injury and turn your brains into an even gooier paste than they already were from this film’s cranial deficiency, we also get scenes of the little kid in Chicago doing the exact same ‘walk around and look for clues, and so it all just sort of blends into a big, tiresome mess. It’s just so slow and so dull that you will be lulled into a horrid comatose state after only a few minutes of watching it. I was. And I never want to go back!

Oh, for Christ's sake...yes, I really DID want to sit here and watch a black screen for 90 minutes. Thank you, movie...

And you’ve got the scene of the creepy journalist and Aubrey sharing a ‘sensitive’ moment when she tells him about how she and Gellar had a fight and didn’t speak ever again. Yeah, really…how investing…

"See? These characters have so much emotion! They're talking about their personal lives and everything!"

I guess the “story” with this, if there even is one, is that the curse from the first movie is spreading because more and more people are dying from rage. Except the whole ‘dying from rage’ thing isn’t ever explained or expounded upon, just like the first movie. Basically all that really happens is that people see a silly looking CGI ghost and then scream a lot. Oooh, scary!

So creepy journalist dies and you can barely tell because he was never very alive to begin with. This freaks Aubrey out for a few seconds, but I guess he was such a weak character that even she couldn’t manage to stay in grief for longer than that…oh, okay, I know it’s a cheap shot continually talking about how shallow the movie’s characters are. But honestly, as an artist, how can you ever be okay with writing like this movie has anyway? I mean what’s the allure? How can you sit there and just let this pass? You’re telling me you NEVER get the impulse to even TRY to make something interesting? Writing boring, half-assed characters is exactly that – BORING!

I guess the allure is supposed to be in the “brilliant” atmosphere and scares, then. That’s fine – but this isn’t some art-house film; it’s a sequel to The Grudge! Your standards already hit bottom before you even put your hands on a keyboard to start this script. So, what, you want to have a scene where one character encounters a girl who, for some random-ass reason, drinks milk and then vomits it back up – right into the gallon, before drinking it again? Well, I’ll tell you; that is just a brilliant way to avoid buying a new gallon of milk.

MILK!

What’s that? You’re completely lost as well on what the story is supposed to be? Don’t worry. Just laugh at this insipid scene of a crazy old man playing ‘peek a boo’ with Aubrey while she’s on a bus:

....why? Just why? I don't even understand. What is this supposed to be?

YES. THIS IS REAL. THE MOVIE’S SCARES INVOLVE VOMITED-UP MILK AND PEEK-A-BOO.

God, OK, so what…let’s at least try to get back on track with the story, as hard as it is to sit through this without stabbing the nearest person to you. I guess that creepy girl in the hood was actually the one Japanese transfer student from earlier, the one whose “friends” locked her in the closet and stuff. She has brought the Grudge curse to America! Shock and awe! Now when people die with anger in their hearts…STUFF WILL HAPPEN!

You know, it’s been two friggin’ years since I reviewed the original Grudge film and this plot point still makes NO SENSE to me. People die angry all the time. And what’s even supposed to happen? They turn into blue-skinned anemic ghosts with bug eyes?

Yeah, that's a nice crack whore who has two kids to feed at home, now where is the real monster?

Yeah, not really that scary! And those special effects, seriously now? This was 2006. I know not every movie had the budget to create something outstanding, but at least a little more effort so that your effects don’t look silly rather than scary would be nice! That’s all I ask, movie! That’s all I ask!

The climax is a big unpleasant mess of screaming, low guttural belching from the ghosts and spazzoid camera angles that make it look like the whole scene was filmed by a guy doing hardcore ninja-dancing at a Hatebreed show. Who even cares about what the story was? It’s beyond salvaging now. Any attempt at such would just result in the death of your faith in mankind’s creative processes. Or just propulsive vomiting. Either one would make sense to me.

This is ass! I can’t think of anything more insipid and thoughtless! Sigh…what am I even supposed to say, anyway? This is not worth any lengthy diatribes on its lack of quality. This is not even worth a short burst of violent expletives. This is just trash that deserves to be thrown in the garbage can. I was going to put some kind of joke about dying angry and coming back as one of those silly looking ghosts, but hey, this isn’t even worth my worst humor possible. The Grudge 2 is a black hole of worthiness! Fie, fie! A pox on thee, terrible, terrible cinematic wasteland!

All images copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.

Review: The Grudge (2004)

Director: Takashi Shimizu

Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar and some other interchangeable faces who I don't even care to look up.

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391198/

Well, I've held off on this one for long enough. The Grudge is a movie that many people who have never seen any other horror movies find terrifying and one that many other people will tell you is a disgrace to the original Japanese version. Well...no. It's just a plain old disgrace in general. To everything. Is it scary at all? Not really. Are you excited yet? I think we've dragged this intro out to a suitable length, so let's just dive right into this carnival of crap.

The movie starts off scary and ominous with a black screen telling us about an inner rage and some demons and the dead and some other bullshit that I can’t even be bothered to waste time analyzing. We see a woman waking up to see her husband standing at the ledge of their incredibly beautiful, picturesque apartment, and then he jumps off. Her reaction is to get up and look down wordlessly without any trace of the panic that a normal person would feel upon witnessing this horrific suicide. I guess maybe she’s seen too many of them and they just don’t shock her anymore? I don’t know. Then we cut away to a Japanese girl named Yoko – because every Japanese person is called that in Hollywood – who is going to her job as a caretaker of an old woman with mental health problems in her deteriorating age. She looks around at the empty house as scary music plays until she looks in the closet and is promptly swallowed whole by a mysterious thing inside…see, goddammit, you opened up the Lovecraftian portal to the realm of Yogth Sothoth. What a nuisance.

Then we cut to another scene with two more characters…because I guess they really just couldn’t choose one or two main characters to focus on…who are just starting their day. Yes, these characters are the same ones you’ll see in more masterpieces like Shutter; a pretty, super perfect blonde girl and her equally unnaturally attractive boyfriend. The girl, named Karen, is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, because I guess they couldn’t sell this movie without a perfect face and a perfect body as a vehicle for their incredibly bland character. She and her boyfriend kiss a little, exchange some pretty standard dialogue and then go outside, where they see some old people performing a Buddhist ritual. This sentimental scene will likely have a hollow and unimportant meaning later on in the film. Take notes!

So Karen gets assigned as a substitute house-keeper for the old lady from before, and after a carnival of jump scares and allegedly ominous camera shots she finds a little boy trapped in the closet with a black cat. Karen tries to set everything straight but it mostly just leads to confusion. They find out the boy’s name is Toshio through an incredibly wooden display of acting from the poor child, and then Karen goes in to check on the old woman. Before she gets her to bed, Karen sees a huge black ectoplasm of a ghost hovering in midair, staring at her with evil eyes.

Don't tell her that ghost is behind her. It's gonna be hilarious.

Where most people would scream in horror and have an extreme reaction, Karen just sits there and gapes at it. Why is everyone in this movie so calm in these incredibly shocking situations? It’s practically ridiculous.

Then we cut to some more characters looking to buy a house…oh come on! You really can’t just stick to one main cast? This is like a fucking game; connect the characters or something. Just pick one or two main characters and develop them before you switch to another couple! These characters have no distinguishing factors aside from their names and genders. That’s it. This movie is about as detailed and exciting as a piece of cardboard.

Anyway, the guy selling the house goes into the bathroom and finds it full of black murky water. When he reaches his hand in, a little child grabs his hand and screams, and he pulls it back to find a clump of wet black hair on it. A second later the gullible white douche comes in to tell him he’s buying the house – and I doubt he intended to mention the screaming child in the bathtub, since that way they would never  buy the house and get him that big fat paycheck. It’s for the mortgage, as Aaron Eckhart might say.

So after some more predictable jump scares, bland conversations and other shit I don’t care about, the wife of this family gets sucked into the closet by some unnamed force too. Then her husband comes home and finds her lying around on the bed, petrified. A little kid pops up like a jack in the box from the other side of the bed and opens his mouth to reveal teeth covered with sticky black shit that would later be used to write the script of Jennifer’s Body, but here is mostly just gross and weird. The husband is…apparently trying to act scared...not really doing well there, pal. And then I guess he gets the axe too. Boy, I’m so glad they didn’t add, you know, depth or anything to these characters! I’d hate having to actually empathize with any of them or give a crap about anything in the plot! I’m just so happy this movie goes the extra mile to suck out any and all enjoyment. Joyous!

Ugh. So then we get the police finding Sarah Michelle Gellar in a trance by the dead old woman’s bedside. These two detective guys look around and find the body of Yoko from the beginning of the film in the attic. OK, seriously, how are there this many secret things in this house? First it was the little boy locked behind the walls, now it’s a bunch of dead or catatonic bodies in the attic. What is this, the house from House of a Thousand Corpses or something? You’re telling me that nobody ever noticed any of this was going on?

Yep. I think that’s my bullshit meter going off!

We cycle through some more delusions with the one guy’s sister who the police found getting haunted as well for some reason. I especially like this one part where she sees a random shadow stumbling around in the hallway on the security camera – oh no, there are PEOPLE IN MY HALLWAY! RUN! Yeah, it’s stupid. Then she gets killed just like everyone else in this movie with a vague supernatural type thing where a woman appears underneath the bed wearing rejected Halloween Horror Nights makeup before the screen cuts to black. This movie keeps doing the same shit over and over again. It’s getting old and stupid – well, stupider – with every single time.

AHAHAHA...oh wait, this is supposed to be scary. Yeah, right.

Then we see Sarah Michelle Gellar researching the murders and finding out that a guy played by Bill Pullman committed suicide after them. She talks to that detective guy from earlier who tells her that in Japan, if people die with rage inside them, it harbors itself on Earth after the death and haunts anyone in the vicinity. So…shouldn’t there logically be lots more cases exactly like this one for people to compare? Shouldn’t there be some general knowledge about this supernatural serial murder epidemic to where people can try and stop it? Are you seriously telling me that not many people die with rage in them? That this is an isolated incident throughout the world, for one woman and child to die without resolving their problems in life? Yeah, right. And I’m the son of a Mexican drug cartel with syphilis and three eyes.

And I don’t even understand what this is supposed to be getting across, either. So…the husband killed his wife and son, so that’s why they’re back, right? But then it’s revealed that the wife had a crush on Bill Pullman? And maybe that’s why she’s still on Earth? What is this movie trying to get across? What is the purpose? They just keep throwing in so many pointless characters and plotlines that it’s like trying to untie a knot. So…yeah. Sarah Michelle Gellar just watches while her boyfriend is horribly killed by the ghost, not even trying to do anything.

Our hero, folks. Our hero.

So in a truly weird, pointless and ridiculous ending we see Gellar in a hospital afterwards with the ghost still haunting her…woohoo? Well, I’m glad this movie’s over. I just don’t really have much to say about this one. It’s kind of a brain fart of a movie; it’s stupid and ridiculous as hell, but it really doesn’t leave much of an impact. It’s a blank space in the creative minds of everyone who worked on it and it will be the same in everyone who watches it too. I’ve already mostly forgotten about this movie at the time of writing this paragraph two days later. In fact, what am I doing? Reviewing…something? Reviewing butterflies?

Yes. That must have been it.