The Grudge
Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Bill Pullman (Paxton?)
Directed by: Takashi Shimizu

Rating: 3.5 (out of 5)

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It's official. I'm never going to Japan. That place scares the hell out of me.

I'll wait a moment for my Japanese readers to celebrate the fact that I won't be crashing on their futons.

I'm not one to speak ill of other countries. I love all cultures (being Canadian, I kind of HAVE to love all cultures, by law). But as wonderful as every Japanese person I know is, there's something about the place that scares me…and I just can't put my finger on it…oh yeah. It's because Japan is the country that gave the world Bukkake, Hentai, and vending machines that sell blue jeans.

Plus, Japanese entertainment scares the living crap out of me. Every scary video game that I have ever played has come from Japan. Most notably is the "Silent Hill" franchise, which is the only video game to give me nightmares. "Fatal Frame", "Siren"…the list goes on. The only explanation that I can come up with is that the nation of Japan secretly wants to give me a heart attack.

"No...NO...Not more IRON CHEF reruns!!!"

And now, of course, there's "The Grudge", the movie with hands-down the worst title of the year. It scared the crap out of me, and I don't scare easily.

To be fair, I was misled. When I saw my Studio contact outside the theatre, he sort of shrugged about it and said, "It's all right…I mean, it's a PG horror movie…" (PG in Ontario is all-ages admitted, with a warning that it might not be appropriate for younger kids…I believe its PG-13 in the US)

This was disappointing to hear from the start. After all, how friggin' scary could a PG horror movie be? What this told me was that this movie was about as scary as the Olsen Twins opus "New York Minute"…which WAS pretty scary, but for different reasons.

After seeing it, let me say this…if you send your kid to see this movie, then you DESERVE to have them wake you up with their nightmares for the next month.

It starts off pretty promising, with the first big jolt-slash-scare mere seconds into it. We see Peter, standing wordlessly while his wife sleeps. Peter is played by either Bill Pullman or Bill Paxton, but they're so interchangeably bland that I can never tell them apart. I won't ruin what happens less than a minute into the flick, but suffice it to say that it's something that I've wanted to happen to Pullman/Paxton ever since he first annoyed the living shit out of me in Spaceballs/Aliens.

"I'm confused...was I in 'Twister' or 'Independence Day'?"

Soon afterwards, we meet Karen (Gellar), an exchange student in Japan. To make ends meet, she's working as a substitute nurse for shut-in patients. Apparently, Yoko (Yoko Maki) didn't show up for work, and they need her to look in on an elderly American woman. Now, the fact that Yoko didn't show up for work is easily explained by the fact that we just saw her meet an untimely end. So now she's in heaven, where she's no doubt trying to interfere in the newly rekindled friendship between John Lennon and George Harrison.

When Karen gets to the house, she meets Emma (Grace Zabriskie). She's not much help in telling Karen what she needs, because she's more or less a catatonic, drooling mess. Kind of like me at 9pm on dollar-beer night (You've heard of Bette Davis Eyes? I get Betty Ford Eyes). Then something seriously fucked up happens.

Quick shift in timeline alert! NOW we're seeing the American family who had just moved into the house! It's Matthew and Jennifer (William Mapother and Clea DuVall) and they're simply ADORABLE. They're moving in with William's slightly less catatonic mother (the aforementioned Emma). All is right with the world…except for the real estate agent, who sees some truly fucked-up shit but decides - like any good real estate agent - not to bring it up. Whatever…they buy the house…and even more truly fucked-up shit happens.

"Mirror Mirror on the wall...why the fuck didn't I ever get an Emmy for 'Buffy'?"

An aside: I complained about the title of the movie earlier. "The Grudge" just doesn't work for me. I know that it's the name of the Japanese original (Ju-On: The Grudge) but for me, it just sounds too much like a Lindsay Lohan movie about bitchy high-school girls. If I were in charge of the studio, based on what I saw of the movie, I'd call it "Truly Fucked-Up Shit". It's perfect, it's descriptive, and nobody is going to be sending their kids to it. That having been said, I think that's a perfect reason NOT to ever put me in charge of a studio.

So we go back to the main timeline, and the cops are all over Emma's house. Karen is pretty much a basket case, and later in the hospital, she tries to explain the truly fucked-up shit that she saw to Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi). For some reason, Nakagawa doesn't seem to believe that Karen is a blubbering lunatic.

Then the story unfolds in a series of about 87 million timeline shifts, introducing more characters than there are people in all of Japan. If you have A.D.D, you're not going to follow this movie, kids. Trust me.

"I spy with my little eye...OH, it's that GUY...from that one movie...oh man, what's his NAME? It's totally on the tip of my tongue! Wait...don't tell me..."

But, in a nutshell, it's the house that's the culprit here. Apparently, there was a brutal, angry murder-suicide in the house a few years before (something ELSE the real estate agent neglected to mention) and, legend has it, the house is now cursed. But these aren't your garden-variety ghosts and ghoulies here. Once you're affected by this curse (or Grudge, or whatever) the truly fucked-up shit follows you around long after you leave the house. This "grudge" ends when you wind up dead…and then, it's passed on to someone else. The vicious cycle repeats itself, ad nauseum. Basically, these ghosts are pissed off about being dead, and just take it out on everybody else who's alive. Talk about your serious anger issues.

But then, for whatever reason, Karen goes and gets aggressive about solving this little mystery, despite the fact that the truly fucked-up shit keeps happening to her. And oddly enough, she doesn't even bother recruiting Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby to help her. Which is a shame…because if there are three people in movies that I WANT to see truly fucked-up shit happen to, it's Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby. Especially Shaggy. God, do I hate that fucking Shaggy.

No, not THAT Shaggy.

In terms of actual scare-value, The Grudge really pulls it off. That having been said, the movie really earns it's PG/PG-13 rating. There's almost no blood, no swearing, and no sex. Yet it still managed to creep me right out.

Part of this is because it's a truly Japanese movie. Instead of gory scenes of heinous violence, it builds a slow dread. The shocking visuals that it DOES use aren't all that grotesque in nature, but they still manage to stick in your head. I never thought that simply the sight of a young Japanese kid making weird noises could be really scary…but it is. But that's the way Shimizu's movie gets you…nightmare visuals, sounds, plenty of darkness, and the creep dial turned up to 11.

This was produced by Sam Raimi - who knows a thing or two about horror himself. The genius behind the "Evil Dead" series (and "For Love Of The Game"…<shudder>, man THAT one creeped me right out!) bought the rights to Ju-On: The Grudge, but then he wisely decided to let original director Shimizu direct this version. So he's managed to keep that special flair that made it so good originally. Interesting side note: between sequels and remakes in Japan, this is roughly the 87th time he's directed this story. Now, I haven't seen ALL of the versions, but from what I hear, in the original Ju-On, Greedo shot first…even though Shimizu vehemently denies it now.

Shimizu tries to explain to the cast why the first draft of the screenplay was written in Haiku-form.

Performance-wise, The Grudge is surprisingly strong. I found Gellar to be fairly effective in her role, and Pullman-Paxton wasn't bad either. The best performance, for my money, was Ryo Ishibashi as the detective. Again, it's hard to cite specifics without spoiling anything, but from beginning to end, I really bought him.

This is really more of an ensemble piece than a starring vehicle for Buffy, and all the pieces come together pretty well. What I really liked is how they didn't dumb it down. There are a lot of timeline changes, but they let us figure that pretty obvious device out on our own…there's no "Three months earlier" tags or crap like that. Plus, they're smart enough to let Japanese people actually speak JAPANESE to each other, instead of thickly accented English to spare the audience all that subtitle reading. Thanks…thanks for believing that I have a three-digit IQ.

On the other hand, I would have liked more blood and gore. Maybe it's because it's Hallowe'en, or maybe I'm just starting to slowly go insane. Either way, it would have been nice. It seemed like they were being too obvious about avoiding the blood, simply so they could get their rating. That having been said, I don't think it would have made the movie any scarier…but it wouldn't have hurt it, either.

"Woohoo! FREEBIRD! SING FREEBIRD NEXT!!!"

There are also a few things that don't add up. Some characters don't seem to be affected by the Amityville Pagoda, and we're left wondering why. There are a few other minor things that either don't make sense or aren't resolved, but in my limited exposure to Japanese horror, this seems to be part of the style.

Hey…"The Grudge" scared me, pure and simple. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go sleep with the lights on. I've been watching nothing but US Election Coverage for the last 2 days…and I'm really, REALLY scared now.

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