Don’t Hold It Against Me - "The
Grudge" is Scary
When a person
dies in the midst of a powerful rage, that force lingers within a
place and, much like a plague, tragically affects the lives of any
whom enter. At least, that’s the central conceit of the popular
Japanese horror series “JU-ON,” and it’s also the scenario of the
Hollywood remake “The Grudge.” Under the deft handling and care of
original creator Takashi Shimizu, this is one of the least-American
horror thrillers to come out of a major studio in quite some time.
Maybe, then, that explains why it also just happens to be one of the
most terrifying.
Exchange
student Karen Walker (Sarah Michelle Gellar, “Cruel Intentions”) is an
aspiring social worker whom innocently agrees to cover for a fellow
student when she doesn’t arrive for work. It’s the home of fellow
American Emma (Grace Zabriskie of “Twin Peaks” fame), a catatonic
elderly woman living with her son Matthew (William Mapother, “In the
Bedroom”) and daughter-in-law Jennifer (Clea Duvall, “The Faculty”),
and when she arrives Karen is aghast to find the place a complete
disaster. That’s nothing, trust me, for a little torn up paper and
some rotting noodles aren’t exactly going to kill you. You pick them
up and they’re gone.
The same
cannot be said for the ghostly specters inhabiting the premises.
Putting it mildly, they’re a bit ticked off, and everyone who comes in
contact with them has the nasty habit of disappearing or turning up
dead. Karen isn’t sure what to do except maybe stay the hell away from
the house. But when disturbing events invade her own home and the
detective in charge (Ryo Ishibashi, “Audition”) warns her she could be
next, Karen decides to be proactive and investigates the house’s
sordid history. What she finds involves emotional and physical
brutality on an astonishing scale, gruesomely linked to the suicide of
a visiting American professor (Bill Pullman, “Independence Day””) with
mysterious ties to the house’s former inhabitants.
Impossible to
really describe, “The Grudge” is a metaphysical thrill ride full of
imagination and psychological manipulation. It will draw comparison’s
– some fair, some not – to “The Ring,” but Shimizu should be applauded
for creating an ethereal world uniquely his own, one with its own set
of rules and regulations that work in the context of the film they
inhabit. More so, American screenwriter Stephen Susco has made the
plot accessible for domestic audiences without sacrificing the Asian
sensibilities integral to it spooky success. Japanese horror,
especially from recent masters of the genre like Kiyoshi Kurosawa
(“The Cure”) and Hideo Nakata (“Ringu”), isn’t big on explanation,
open questions and unresolved denouements key to keeping people off
their guard. That’s the way it is here, so anyone looking for riddles
answered or cute little bows tying things together will be deeply
disappointed.
However, if
you like this sort of thing, and I most certainly do, than “The
Grudge” is one hot ticket. Shimizu understands it is the unknown and
the unseen that’s scariest, resorting to gurgled growls and passing
glimpses of greasy-haired demons to illicit shrieks and shouts from
theater audiences. Shot in a never-ending series of creamy blues and
pixilated grays, the film never allows the viewer to get their
bearings nor an opportunity to leave the confined spaces its deftly
planted them within. And when color or light does appear, it is a
shock to the system, like apparently returning to the real world after
enduring a terrible nightmare only to have that world’s luster slowly
dissolve away into nothingness the bad dream continuing.
Unsurprisingly, this isn’t really an actor’s movie. Mostly, all
everyone has to do is run around looking half-dead or completely
scared out of his or her minds, and they all do the open-mouthed
terror thing with aplomb. Gellar, no stranger to the supernatural with
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” tries her best to be Sherlock Holmes but
it’s so apparent both Shimizu and Susco could care less about
sleuthing and more about shocking she’s unfortunately left dangling.
As for Pullman, his part is really only a cameo, but it’s still an
effective one and the audience’s first introduction to him is one
they’re going to remember. Also, while I tend to go for the Japanese
horror ethos of leaving things hanging, I’m not a big fan of things
happening for no apparent reason. The ghosts of “The Grudge” spend a
lot of time showing off for Karen, revealing bits and pieces of their
backstory to her but to what end is never really clear. It doesn’t
make sense, especially when people who spend no more than a few
minutes in the house get haunted down like dogs and dispatched without
so much as a thank you or a post-coital cigarette.
Still, this is
one significantly scary fright flick bending time and looping in on
itself like a giant puzzle box, Only this one is full of razors
instead of a candy surprise. Choosing to remake this picture in Japan
with the original’s director and crew proves to be ingenious, the
movie a thrifty combination of Kurosawa’s “Sčance,” Boorman’s “The
Exorcist” and Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.” More so, it
intelligently embraces the audience and assumes they don’t need every
moment, every nuance spelled out, using imagination and slight of hand
to create a sense of eminent doom that’s completely palpable. “The
Grudge” works, and I’ve got the sweaty palms to prove it.
