The Grudge (2004) – Pretty creepy (if you haven’t seen the original – apparently)

I watched ‘The Grudge’ in 2004 and was really impressed.  Then I learned it was a remake of a Japanese horror film and everyone who’d already watched that couldn’t stop talking about how much worse this Hollywood remake was.  However, seeing as I’ve never seen the original (shame on me), I guess I can still enjoy the movie for what it is… a tight little horror story.

Sarah Michelle Gellar does her best to play ‘Karen’ – a character not quite so skilled in killing the undead when she begins her new job in Japan of taking care of a housebound old lady (Grace Zabriskie, from ‘Twin Peaks’ who seems destined to play these crazy, tortured souls!).  Unfortunately, the house she lives in is haunted by a particularly nasty ghost (and just a plain weird ghostly little boy).  Soon, Buffy… I mean Karen, finds she can’t go anywhere without hearing an ominous throaty drone which seems to indicate that the ghost is about to make an appearance.

Despite Sarah Michelle Gellar being the obvious star, there are also sub-plots involving other victims of the spook, namely Clea DuVall and Bill Pullman (don’t let the opening scene where he kills himself fool you into thinking there isn’t more to his story than just a cameo in the first shots).  Because of this the movie does jump around a bit from one set of characters to the next.  You have to stick with it to piece together how they are all related before the story finally gets picked up (proper) by Sarah Michelle Gellar, who’s left to ‘finish’ the tale in the third act.

I totally enjoyed the spooky atmosphere created and the setting of a Japanese city made a nice change from an American metropolis.  There isn’t too much blood and gore; instead you get spooky kills where much is left up to the viewers’ imaginations.  And, although you do see the ghosts pretty well, props to the film-makers who came up with the creepy drone-repeating click noise it makes when it’s getting ready for the kill.  I haven’t watched ‘The Grudge’ in years, but the one thing I always remember is that noise!

Now, I know a lot of similar style ghost stories came out in the 2000s (mainly after the success of the Hollywood version of ‘The Ring’) and ‘The Grudge does suffer a little from being released after ‘The Ring’ as to setting the standards for movies.  Yes, a few moments you may see coming, but it’s certainly a lot better than many of the similar genre movies that came out after it and it’s as watchable as ever today (even if the mobile phones are out of date!).

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one