The Grudge (Unrated Extended Director's Cut)

31 Days of Horror: Day 4

"It never forgives.  It never forgets."  Is that tagline supposed to frighten me, or make me think that this is just a movie about an asshole?  Or perhaps it is a subtle ploy to get some sympathy cards?  Well, it's not working.  As part of my month of horror reviews, I wanted to contrast and compare a Japanese horror flick with its American remake.  I chose The Grudge because: A) I haven't seen Ju-On: The Grudge yet and B) I couldn't remember anything but Cat Boy from the American version.  I watched this movie when it came out on DVD with Danny O'D; I remembered him hateHATEhating the film, but couldn't remember why.  All I remembered was the general feeling of it being a crap movie.  But, unlike The Grudge, I both forget and forgive (all movies except The Doom Generation), so I gave this film another shot.

 

The Grudge begins with a foreword: "When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. The curse gathers in that place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury."  So...it's a "curse," not a "grudge?"  We're not off to a great start, are we?

What if I told you there was ramen-sniffing later?  Is that better?

The film opens in Japan with Peter (Bill Pullman) committing suicide without saying a word of dialogue, which was both unexpected and hilarious. 

Above: America's greatest President, contemplating comedy gold

The story then cuts to Yoko (Yôko Maki), an in-home caretaker, stopping by the Williams family house to take care of an elderly patient.  When she arrives, neither Mr. or Mrs. Williams is home, which is odd, but creepy ol' Grannie Williams is, so Yoko gets to work.  Until, that is, she hears a noise upstairs.  Since this is an American horror movie and her name is Yoko, you know something bad is going to happen to her.  And it does.  She opens a closet door and is pulled into an attic, where bad things presumably happen.

At least she won't sing on the next Plastic Ono Band album

The next day, Yoko's boss (Ted Raimi) can't get her on the phone (not that she could talk, anyway) and decides to send in a substitute caretaker to make sure Yoko's patient is still alive and not rolling around in her own filth.  He chooses Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) for the job.  Karen arrives at the same house and finds the same creepy old lady, only this time the house is a bit of a mess.  Attic murder will do that to a place, I guess. After doing some preliminary cleaning up, Karen finds a little boy in the house.  He's not just any boy, though; this boy appears to be the local champion of Aggressive Staring.

This is the furthest thing I can imagine from the Care Bear Stare

Toshio (Yuya Ozeki) doesn't speak English, and of course Karen doesn't speak Japanese while living in Japan (stupid American!).  But remember that thing that yanked Yoko into the attic?  It's still in the house.  And that creepy kid?  Yeah, he only gets creepier.

This film was brought to you by the Commission to Never Adopt Asian Children

From this point forward, we follow Karen as she tries to understand the complex web of death surrounding the house.  Well, maybe it's not all that complex.  It seems like everyone who's ever been inside is vanishing.  But why?  And...Karen went inside!  Oh gosh, oh me, oh my!

Let's talk about the acting in The Grudge for a few moments.  As far as the creepy Asian grudgelings go, they were all fine.  You might recognize Takako Fuji and Yuya Ozeki as the creepy lady and Cat Boy from the original film, Ju-On: The Grudge.  They were respectably weird and unsettling, even if screen captures from their scariest scenes sometimes look like the opening to some disgusting fetish porn.

"It's so...how you say...BIG!"

Neither actor had a lot to do.  They had some weird sounds dubbed in and exaggerated facial expressions.  Fuji does a mean crab walk and Ozeki can open his mouth wide enough to make that weird cat siren noise unsettling instead of silly.  The script treats them more like walking avatars of death than actual characters, though.  Most of the actors were forced to play "normal" people that wandered cluelessly toward their death.  William Mapother and Clea DuVall, who both normally play one-note characters, were restricted to zero notes; by the time they showed up on-screen, it was obvious that they were there to be bland and increase the victim total, which they did.  I always like seeing Ted Raimi in movies, more because I know his brother is producing than thanks to any talent on Ted's part.  I was largely indifferent to KaDee Strickland's performance; her character did stupid things (what adult hides under her blanket?), but that's not Strickland's fault.

Why does the elevator have windows if they're just looking at hallways?

Jason Behr plays a theoretically important part in The Grudge, but he's hard to take seriously.  It's not just the fact that he has all the charm of a zombie squirrel, but he somehow finds a way to leave his mouth open whenever he is supposed to be conveying emotion.

Is that "abject despair" or "I forgot my keys"?

The lead in this film is, of course, Sarah Michelle Gellar.  I have nothing against Gellar usually --- she can deliver clever lines well, when they're given to her --- but she is a terrible horror actress.  Yes, she can scream, but there's more to the genre than that.  When Gellar is asked to play vulnerable characters, that requires her to show things like fear, concern, and uncertainty.  Apparently, those emotions are outside her range.

All she would need to look scared is glance at the old lady

What audiences get is a blend of "I don't get it" and "I have a concussion."

The Grudge was directed by Takashi Shimizu.  He also wrote and directed all four of the Japanese Ju-On movies before this one.  In other words, Shimizu knows his creepy Asian kids.

With all that practice, it astounds me at how boring The Grudge is.   It has possibly the worst pacing I have ever seen in a horror movie.  I can enjoy a slow-building horror flick, but it needs payoff.  All we get in this movie is a series of short stories about people looking worried, a boy with a meow instead of a voice, and somebody dies or disappears.  But the audience doesn't know or care about any of the victims and the killer has the personality of a shadow...so who are we supposed to be rooting for or against?  I also wasn't crazy for the cinematography.  In a movie that could have had some interesting camera angles providing hints or visual cues, it was shot in a very straightforward way.

Except for the rap video, of course

Before I ramble on about the many faults of The Grudge, I should point out that there are a few very good visual moments.  Both Toshio and the lady with all the hair were visually stunning.  Toshio's cat noises were definitely unique and unsettling.  The lady being under the covers, while really stupid, was definitely one of the highlights of the film, visually.  My favorite moment, though, was the fingers in Gellar's hair.

Unfortunately, not a result of punching through her face

That was a great moment, even if Gellar's acting didn't capitalize on that moment of confused terror.

I can see why some people might be frightened by The Grudge.  It's a supernatural threat that attacks you without any clear cause and it can come after you anywhere at any time.  But there are a lot better scary movies out there.  Let's look at the story.  It is told in a nonlinear fashion, so there isn't a logical build to a clear threat or showdown.  Instead, there is sequence after sequence of people entering a house and dying.  Except when they don't, in which case the weird killer ghost things follow you home or (if you're Sarah Michelle Gellar) let you live for presumably several months in fear.  Where's the scares or suspense in that?  And then there is an inexplicable time-travel/mind-reading/flashback scene where past events are shown in not-cliche-at-all grainy black-and-white.  This is the scene where the dastardly secret of this film is supposed to be explained, and the best way to do that is by having Sarah Michelle Gellar warp time and space?  I would have been fine with that (maybe) if the reveal was interesting at all.  But it's not.  No shit, some people got murdered in the house --- we've known that for a damn hour!

But did you know it caused GHOST CRAWLING?!?

Maybe the filmmakers thought that the Bill Pullman subplot was the thing to truly hook audiences: "Remember that guy we killed in the opening scene and have barely referenced since?  Let's tie him into an unemotional climax!"  The Grudge is a film that wants to make you afraid to be alone (which apparently happens all the time in urban Japan), but all it has to offer is a bogeyman.  There is very little gore, zero suspense, and a nonsensical plot that ensures that you don't give a crap about the fate of anyone in the movie.

That is the expression I had on my face for this whole movie

The Grudge is a bad, dull movie.  It only narrowly avoided actively pissing me off, and that was simply because I just can't gather up enough hate to overcome my indifference.  Watching this is really making me dread watching the Japanese version.

Peacock

When I saw the cover to Peacock, I assumed that this was going to be some sort of drama between the three actors on the cover (Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, and Cillian Murphy).  It sounds like a reasonable premise, especially with the tag line of "If only he knew what she was doing."  Since this was released direct-to-DVD, it hasn't gotten much buzz; in other words, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The first scene shows a 1950s American housewife doing chores --- pinning up laundry in the back yard, cleaning, cooking, etc. --- and then going upstairs to her bedroom.  On the bed is a neatly folded pile of men's clothing.  She pauses for a moment, takes off her wig, and you realize that you've been watching Cillian Murphy dressed as a woman for the past couple of minutes.  Well, I figured it out a little ahead of time, but if you weren't familiar with Murphy, that scene would have been quite a shock.  Before I go on, I have to point out that this is not exactly a movie about cross-dressing.  I mention that because, more often than not, cross-dressing in movies and television is used for cheap laughs.

There's nothing wrong with that, but I just wanted to make it clear that this isn't cross-dressing for comedy.  Murphy's character is also not pulling a Buffalo Bill in this movie and using cross-dressing in a horror film context.  This is something different.

Every morning, John (Cillian Murphy) wakes up and dresses himself up as Emma.  Emma takes care of John, doing the housework, cooking, and leaving him notes and instructions on what to do while she's "sleeping."  When it is time, Emma goes upstairs, changes into John's clothes, and he seems delighted to find breakfast with a good luck note by his plate.  Obviously, John has some sort of dissociative identity disorder, because the two personalities seem oblivious to each other.  John goes about his day as a painfully shy and socially awkward bank worker, comes home, and repeats the routine again in the morning.  No one knows about Emma.

One morning, while putting up the laundry to dry, Emma is knocked unconscious when a train car is derailed and tears through the back yard.  The accident brings neighbors running, and they find a loose caboose in the yard with a woman that no one in the small town has ever met before.  Emma excuses herself as quickly as she can, goes inside and changes into John, but the damage is done.  The townsfolk want to see and speak with the woman who narrowly avoided a tragic death; Fanny (Susan Sarandon) wants to get Emma involved in the local women's shelter; the incumbent mayor (Keith Carradine) wants to hold a rally in their back yard and have pictures taken with both John and his lovely wife, Emma; Maggie (Ellen Page), a struggling young mother, is forced to ask John for financial aid, but is willing to accept Emma's care and advice.  From the moment that train jumps the rails, John's carefully designed insular life begins to unravel.

This is Cillian Murphy's movie from start to finish.  The supporting actors are good; there really isn't a bad performance in the bunch.  Susan Sarandon is fine as a do-gooding socialite, Ellen Page showed some depth in a tough role, and even the typically mediocre Bill Pullman was fine.  I was pleasantly surprised by Josh Lucas' understated performance as the closest thing John has to a friend, too.  The supporting cast is just window dressing on this movie, though.  This is all about Murphy's performance.  I was very impressed with the way he channeled two distinct characters; changing his voice and appearance are no-brainers, but Murphy was able to give each character its own physicality, and that is where his performance impresses the most.  He's certainly not a pretty woman, but I thought he was pretty convincing, and that is a huge step toward making this film work.

Still prettier than Fergie.

This is director and co-writer Michael Lander's first feature-length film, and it definitely shows off a particular strength.  While it certainly helps that a noteworthy cast (two cast members from Inception, for starters) signed on to a movie written and directed by an unproved talent, Lander obviously had pretty clear ideas about what he wanted to do with this film.  The set and the props in scenes were arranged with particular purposes in mind, and they all paid off.  Lander also did a good job with the cast, guiding them toward very sympathetic performances (except Pullman, who was supposed to be mean).

I was less impressed with Lander's story.  By showing that John and Emma were different personalities from the same mind within the first few minutes of the film, it eliminated the main surprise of this story.  From that point forward, the movie focuses on the battle between the personas to see which will emerge victorious; this is a very gradual process, but the slow pace might have worked if there was an appropriate climax.  There isn't.  Sure, we see how far the personalities are willing to go to defeat the other into submission, but it is nowhere near as disturbing as the movie is building it up to be.

This had a lot of promising elements that could have come together to make a rather disturbing psychological drama/horror flick.  Brian Reitzell's score did a great job conveying the conflict within John's body and was occasionally very creepy.  The performances were solid all around, with Cillian Murphy giving a particularly impressive performance.  Unfortunately, something is missing.  Maybe it is the lack of a satisfying conclusion.  Maybe it's the fact that none of these characters are particularly interesting (aside from a case of multiple personalities), or maybe it's because none of the townspeople immediately realize that Emma is a dude.  Everything in this movie is so serious, so sad, so...drab.  There is no joy in this film to balance that out, and the lack of a chilling or horrifying conclusion multiplies that drab feeling.  It's not a bad idea, and I feel bad that Murphy wasted a lot of good work here, but the movie doesn't live up to the sum of its parts.

As a quick final note, I know I criticize this movie for not being horrific enough, and some people might disagree with that statement.  SPOILER ALERT: I don't care if a drifter gets killed in this movie.  Drifters are just fodder for serial killers in movies, and you knew from the moment he appeared on screen that something bad would happen to him.  That's what he gets for talking to strangers.

Independence Day

There are movies, and then there are films.  The difference can be subtle.  Sometimes, all it takes to move from traditional popcorn fodder to artistic statement is a single performance.  Other times, it requires a hefty dose of Jeff Goldblum and exploding the living hell out of America's landmarks.  Roland Emmerich has never directed a subtle movie (aside from Godzilla (1998) of course), so guess which route he took?

Independence Day answers the question of whether humanity is the only intelligent life in the universe.  The answer is "No, and where do you get off calling humanity 'intelligent'?"  So, yes, Elliot, there are aliens, and of course the aliens want to kill us.  Do you blame them?  Look how well we take care of things; America is now surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of Inkwell.  Actually, this movie takes a much more intimate look at how Earthlings (by which, I of course mean Americans) might handle a hostile alien invasion.  Maybe, if all of America were wusses like Arizona, we would just pass a ridiculous law or two.  Luckily, the other forty-eight states (I'll be dead and buried before I recognize Mizzoura) play for keeps.  When aliens come into our atmosphere and blow all the major cities in the world to hell, that just makes us mad.  Well, it makes us panic and despair first, but after our greatest president gives a speech to a bunch of semi-professional pilots, we are ready to kick butts and mispronounce names.  All we need is a hero and a nerd to lead us to victory.  As far as heroes go, it's hard to top mid-90's Will Smith.  The man has charm, talent, and is fun to watch.  As far as nerds go, Anthony Edwards must have been busy.  Still, Jeff Goldblum is a respectable substitute.  Like many mid-90's movies, it turns out that the cure to everything is computer knowledge, so getting a cable repairman/Mensa member to go into space and launch a computer virus into the alien spaceship network sounds waaaaay too easy.  And it is.  But this isn't a movie that ever tried to be smart, so just be happy it's loud and dumb and never gets pretentious.

Is there more to the movie than that?  Of course there is.  This is a big, blockbuster film, so it has an enormous supporting cast.  In the apolitcal and non-military side of things, we have Judd Hirsch playing the broadest Jewish stereotype I have ever seen outside of Seinfeld.  It works, if only because Hirsch is funny, but damn, he is kind of offensive.  Harvey Fierstein plays an obviously heterosexual man at the cable company and Randy Quaid is a drunk pilot (with something to prove to the aliens) with James Duval as his frustrated son.  Randy is drunk in this movie, which is what I expect from all of his roles, but Duval manages to exude frustration, tenderness, and the slightest hint of acting talent in his supporting role (which is surprising, since he stars in my Most Hated Movie, The Doom Generation).

Interesting side note...I am reasonably sure that Randy Quaid wasn't even cast in this film.  He just showed up, drunk as a Senator, and wouldn't leave.  He had some story about being abducted by aliens, and the filmmakers decided "Why not?"  The rest is history.  "Uh, Brian, if that's the case, why isn't his character named Randy?"  Because he was drunk for a solid week.  He might not respond to the name Russell at first, but it only takes four or five tries to convince him of his new identity.

And then there's Jeff Goldblum as a genius/cable repairman.  He has always had a unique speech cadence, but this is the movie that makes it his calling card.  Like Christopher Walken before him, Goldblum is able to channel awkwardness in such an unexpected way that the rest of the cast simply has to bow down before him. This is also the movie script that took his vocal mannerisms and gave him a script just as ludicrous.  Whenever he has an epiphany, he speaks his train of thought out loud and it is beyond believable.  But that's how this movie works.  It takes a decent idea, makes it overblown to the point of being absolutely terrible, and keeps going until it becomes ironic.  This is the epitome of so-bad-it's-good movie making, and Goldblum's character is the best illustration of this.

The President of the United States is Bill Pullman, with a First Lady (Mary McDonnell) that seems to want him to learn to lie better than he does.  Hmm.  He has a capable adviser and a former wife of Goldblum on his staff, Margaret Colin.  Robert Loggia also serves as a military advisor, as does Adam Baldwin (to a lesser extent), but they basically just grimace and shoot things in the movie.  Will Smith is a fighter pilot with Vivica A. Fox as his stripper girlfriend.  He is buddies with another pilot, Harry Connick, Jr., who is less talented (as a pilot) and used as alien cannon-fodder/don't-ask-don't-tell jokes.  Brent Spiner also makes an appearance as a scientist that is clearly not as intelligent as Goldblum's cable repairman.  How embarrassing.

This is not a smart movie.  It is big, loud, and stupid.  The characters are shallow, the dialogue is full of cliche one-liners ("Now that's what I call a close encounter").  You don't care when somebody dies in the movie; this is basically a disaster flick, so that stuff happens sometimes.  This movie is all about the spectacle.  Want to blow up the White House?  Done.  You want Will Smith to punch out an alien?  No problem.  How about an embattled president giving the best damn speech any president has ever given, where he calls for international cooperation in front of an exclusively American audience?  We can make that happen.

I will give Roland Emmerich credit where it's due --- this is a big movie, filled with big moments.  The fact that those moments are effective (or, at least, cool looking) shows the success of this movie.  Emmerich's other films are just as stupid as this, but they lose momentum by the final act.  The pacing in Independence Day is pretty good, with a nice build-up and then waves of action from there on out.  The acting and script are definitely second to the big dumb stuff, but that's okay.  Sometimes, details like characterization get in the way and force movies to spend less time on blowing up the White House.  And we wouldn't want that, would we?

In a way, the silly things are what makes this such an enjoyable movie for me.  It's easy to go back to the special effects blockbusters of years past and be unimpressed; the effects are dated, the characters are cliche, and the personal style of the cast is questionable, at best.  Independence Day still stands up because it is not so serious.  The fact that the dialogue and plot are bad enough for even dramatic characters to be kind of funny defies the odds and enhances that attitude.  This may be a disaster movie, but it's a fun movie, too.  Is this an artistic film?  God, no.  It is the kind of big, dumb action movie that Hollywood loves to make, but rarely completely succeeds with.  And if that doesn't make you feel patriotic, I don't know what will.