I have a grudge against the Grudge...
Originally posted on 02/10/05...
I watched the movie The Grudge on DVD last week. I was kind of looking forward to watching it because I heard that it was supposed to be scary as hell. To an extent, I could see how it'd be scary. It's got a freaky little kid that does a screaching cat noise when he opens his mouth. There's a freaky looking lady with black hair that reminded me of the girl in The Ring if she was older. In Hollywood lately, there seems to be an affinity for creepy women with their hair in their face for scary effect.
There are some spoilers ahead, so if you want to watch the movie, you might want to stop reading.
The movie centers around a curse on a house. In Japanese culture apparently, if someone dies in a fit of rage, a curse is placed on the house. Anyone that walks into that house will be caught in the fury of the curse and will be doomed. Now, that would be a pretty neat premise if that's how it plays itself out, but it doesn't. Granted, there is a creepy back story from when the original murders take place in the house three years earlier, but it doesn't hold up.
The movie starts with a family caregiver named Yoko, caring for a lethargic woman. She starts cleaning and hears a sound in the ceiling. She investigates. She dies. Curiosity kills Yoko I guess.
Sara Michelle Gellar is an American exchange student who works for the came caregiver company and is sent to fill in for Yoko, who didn't show up that day. She comes to the house to find it all in disarray and helps the lady living there into bed and cleans. Some more strange happenings go down and the lady gets it. This is where I had problems with the movie...
The police all show up and then they start showing flashbacks to when a couple moves into the house with the lady, who is the mother of the husband. While the house is being shown, strange stuff happens to the real estate guy, but strangely, he doesn't die.
We come to find later that the husband's sister, who was shown the house with them, also dies in a strange manner.
The police chief on the case tells Gellar's character that the house has a curse and what not, but if the whole premise of the movie is that anyone that enters the house is doomed with the curse, then wouldn't the initial police and medical crews that entered the house be cursed? In flashbacks, only 4 people are affected. Three of the police that investigated ended up dead, but I'm pretty sure more people would have entered the house to investigate.
In the present, there are at least a dozen people in the house when the police come. Surely all of them are doomed? What about the 3 years from when the house was empty and it was occupied again? Didn't a crew probably came in to clean and paint it? No one from the Trading Spaces crew got it? Now that would have been a Trading Spaces I'd watch.
"I'm Paige Davis and today we trade homes with a couple that was recently murdered. Will their spirits design a home that their neighbors will love or will it give them the chills..."
But I digress...
Let's get back to the movie.
So we have a real estate guy, a painting crew, a cleaning crew, the building inpectors, paramedics, reporters that covered the case, anyone that happened to get shown the house by the realtor, the realtor himself, two different sets of policemen. That's a lot of people! That's what distracted me about the premise, for hyped up non-selective ghosts, they sure are selective.
So I have a problem with the loopholes in the premise. Does the movie stack up? Well, if your the person that is easily scared by freaky looking kids and dark, scary women, then this movie will probably scare the hell out of you, but two things about the main lurkers in the movie also caused me some problems with getting into and being scared.
One, the kid is only creepy when he opens his mouth and when he does, he suddenly grows pale as the special effects morph in and he wails like a screeching cat. as I mentioned earlier. Because of this, I was more confused than anything. He's nice and quiet, but only seems to get evil when the cat voice kicks in. Is the director saying that all black cats are evil? Also, why a cat's voice? It was pointed out to me by a co-worker that in Japanese lore if a person dies at the same time as an animal, the two spirits will merge. I should mention that the kid had a black cat who inexplicably gets whacked during the original rage.
Second, the lady that staggers causing horrors sounds like she's gagging on something. It became a bit of overkill after a while. She's crawling down some stairs trying to be scary, but meanwhile she's gagging away and it sounds ridiculous.
All in all, it's an okay movie that is ruined by a premise that promises a nifty curse, but in the end, it has problems like all horror movies, the premise can't live up to the story.
I watched the movie The Grudge on DVD last week. I was kind of looking forward to watching it because I heard that it was supposed to be scary as hell. To an extent, I could see how it'd be scary. It's got a freaky little kid that does a screaching cat noise when he opens his mouth. There's a freaky looking lady with black hair that reminded me of the girl in The Ring if she was older. In Hollywood lately, there seems to be an affinity for creepy women with their hair in their face for scary effect.
There are some spoilers ahead, so if you want to watch the movie, you might want to stop reading.
The movie centers around a curse on a house. In Japanese culture apparently, if someone dies in a fit of rage, a curse is placed on the house. Anyone that walks into that house will be caught in the fury of the curse and will be doomed. Now, that would be a pretty neat premise if that's how it plays itself out, but it doesn't. Granted, there is a creepy back story from when the original murders take place in the house three years earlier, but it doesn't hold up.
The movie starts with a family caregiver named Yoko, caring for a lethargic woman. She starts cleaning and hears a sound in the ceiling. She investigates. She dies. Curiosity kills Yoko I guess.
Sara Michelle Gellar is an American exchange student who works for the came caregiver company and is sent to fill in for Yoko, who didn't show up that day. She comes to the house to find it all in disarray and helps the lady living there into bed and cleans. Some more strange happenings go down and the lady gets it. This is where I had problems with the movie...
The police all show up and then they start showing flashbacks to when a couple moves into the house with the lady, who is the mother of the husband. While the house is being shown, strange stuff happens to the real estate guy, but strangely, he doesn't die.
We come to find later that the husband's sister, who was shown the house with them, also dies in a strange manner.
The police chief on the case tells Gellar's character that the house has a curse and what not, but if the whole premise of the movie is that anyone that enters the house is doomed with the curse, then wouldn't the initial police and medical crews that entered the house be cursed? In flashbacks, only 4 people are affected. Three of the police that investigated ended up dead, but I'm pretty sure more people would have entered the house to investigate.
In the present, there are at least a dozen people in the house when the police come. Surely all of them are doomed? What about the 3 years from when the house was empty and it was occupied again? Didn't a crew probably came in to clean and paint it? No one from the Trading Spaces crew got it? Now that would have been a Trading Spaces I'd watch.
"I'm Paige Davis and today we trade homes with a couple that was recently murdered. Will their spirits design a home that their neighbors will love or will it give them the chills..."
But I digress...
Let's get back to the movie.
So we have a real estate guy, a painting crew, a cleaning crew, the building inpectors, paramedics, reporters that covered the case, anyone that happened to get shown the house by the realtor, the realtor himself, two different sets of policemen. That's a lot of people! That's what distracted me about the premise, for hyped up non-selective ghosts, they sure are selective.
So I have a problem with the loopholes in the premise. Does the movie stack up? Well, if your the person that is easily scared by freaky looking kids and dark, scary women, then this movie will probably scare the hell out of you, but two things about the main lurkers in the movie also caused me some problems with getting into and being scared.
One, the kid is only creepy when he opens his mouth and when he does, he suddenly grows pale as the special effects morph in and he wails like a screeching cat. as I mentioned earlier. Because of this, I was more confused than anything. He's nice and quiet, but only seems to get evil when the cat voice kicks in. Is the director saying that all black cats are evil? Also, why a cat's voice? It was pointed out to me by a co-worker that in Japanese lore if a person dies at the same time as an animal, the two spirits will merge. I should mention that the kid had a black cat who inexplicably gets whacked during the original rage.
Second, the lady that staggers causing horrors sounds like she's gagging on something. It became a bit of overkill after a while. She's crawling down some stairs trying to be scary, but meanwhile she's gagging away and it sounds ridiculous.
All in all, it's an okay movie that is ruined by a premise that promises a nifty curse, but in the end, it has problems like all horror movies, the premise can't live up to the story.
posted by Bob At Large @ 5:01 PM
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