The Grudge 2

Horror movies have a tendency to be formulaic. There’s some kind of unstoppable entity that does harm to innocent kids or young adults. Horror movies that have been imported from Japan are even more formulaic than usual. In these there is generally a creepy child ghost featuring dark eyes and chalk white skin, as well as pictures with unexplained dark spots, a heroine who is warned to stay away even though she will obviously rush to get deeply involved, and there is always large quantities of sinister water.
It’s been this way since the gold standard of imported horror, The Ring, and it continued through Dark Water, The Ring 2, The Grudge, and now The Grudge 2. You think we have a lot of sequels here; The Ringu series has at least five installments in Japan.
The thing about these movies is that, since they all follow a similar pattern, the audience pretty much knows what’s likely to happen. As long as the filmmakers continue to produce them according to this design the same audiences will return to see them again because, let’s be honest, who can resist all of the above-mentioned elements? It’s like Disney’s animated movies but for an older audience.
Be that as it may, they’re still all individual movies and like all individual movies they must be picked apart and judged accordingly. The Grudge 2 is lucky to have a marketing gimmick in its favor. Its release date of Friday the thirteenth of October lends itself well to a horror movie, like The Omen earlier this year, which incorporated the release date of 6.6.06 into its marketing.
Unfortunately the “thrill” of this fabulous release date has worn off before the previews are finished leaving us to be amused by the ghosts, dark spots, heroines, and water found in the movie. It’s important to judge movies like The Grudge 2 on the proper terms. Just as musicals are sized up based upon their songs, or kung-fu movies according to their action scenes, Horror movies are to be judged by the jump scenes and the amount of tension they successfully create. Anything above and beyond the basic requirements ought to be considered a bonus.
In an attempt to separate The Grudge 2 from the myriad other horror movies I’ll try to sum it up without giving too much away. Karen, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar returned from the first Grudge, is in a Tokyo hospital following the events of the first film. Her sister Aubrey, played by Amber Tamblyn, comes to Tokyo despite a long-standing fight between the two that has kept them from talking to each other for over two years.
Meanwhile three teenage girls from an international high school decide they will venture into the burned out house that is said to be haunted. This house being the very same one that Karen attempted to burn to the ground, at the end of the first film, in hopes of destroying the ghost of a woman who was murdered there, along with her little boy, by her husband. The story goes that once a person is inside the house they are cursed by this murderous grudge that remains from the horrific deeds of the past. The vengeful ghost one by one takes these three schoolgirls, who by horror default must be dressed throughout the film either in nothing or in sexed up prep school uniforms.
The last of the storylines involves an American family who consist of a father, his new honey, a teenage daughter, and a young boy. Their story serves as an opportunity to reproduce a similar situation in potential sequels.
The stories all find a way to be tied to each other in a small way though it’s not as powerful a tool here as in such films as Love Actually or Crash, and at the conclusion there are still a lot more things unsolved than explained.
The movie is not great, but how could you honestly expect it be? The filming is by the books; I can’t remember any kind of a soundtrack besides the random clash of symbols to help with a jump scene. As far as acting goes, well let’s just say that some one ought to tell Amber Tamblyn that opening your eyes as wide as possible while letting your mouth hang open and flaring your nostrils isn’t acting, it’s annoying. But we aren’t there to see anybody act; we’re there to get scared. The Grudge 2 has some scary parts but not many, it’s about as good as it could have been, unfortunately it couldn’t ever have really been that good.

C+