Ju-On: The Grudge

31 Days of Horror: Day 5

I set a goal for myself this October: to watch and review a Japanese horror movie and its American remake.  I chose The Grudge and Ju-On: The Grudge, mostly because I didn't remember much about the story.  It turns out that re-watching The Grudge was a mistake.  It's pretty terrible.  However, there are some genuinely creepy images at the core of the film.  I was kind of depressed when I finished watching it because I knew that I had already decided to watch the same basic movie again, only with subtitles.  I started to perk up when I gave the matter a little more thought, though.  Of course the American remake sucks; it is a remake and American movies tend not to do supernatural horror as well as Asian cinema.  It would also follow that the American version was a lot tamer than the Japanese version, since Americans keep paying to see the same sequels over and over, while Japan is the home of tentacle porn, which is obviously far more disturbing, and I'm pretty sure it's the source of our conflict in WWII.  At the very least, I hope watching Ju-On: The Grudge will help me figure out why they wanted to make an American version at all.

Ju-On: The Grudge is assembled in a series of six vignettes, named after the main character of each chapter.  Rika (Megumi Okina) works as a visiting caretaker, giving families a helping hand by caring for the elderly relatives in their homes.  When Rika stops by her newest patient's home, she finds only the catatonic patient home --- the husband and wife who own the place are gone.  They left it a mess, too; it looks like grandma had a few friends over and they had a "throw wads of paper on the floor" party.  While cleaning up, Rika hears some scratching noises coming from an upstairs bedroom closet.  The closet in question is covered with tape, to keep it closed.  At this point, Rika seems willing to leave whatever is trapped in there --- a dying child, a sex slave, a magical elf king, or whatever ---alone.  In retrospect, that reluctance was a pretty good idea.  She only tears the tape off and opens the door when she hears a cat's meow.  She opens the door and finds a cat; she is also disappointed (I assume) when she sees a creepy child in the closet, as well.

More proof that you should never let kids out of closets

As Rika is trying to call social services (or, as they call it in Japan, "Super Ethical Family Dilemma Extreme GT") about creepy little Toshio (Yuya Ozeki), she sees a black cloud-thing hover over the old grandma lady; the cloud made a guttural, reverse-burping noise and then and then it had eyes and they were looking (LOOKING!) at Rika and...and...Rika faints.  ***deep breath***  The gist of the story is that anyone who goes into this cursed (grudged?) house is going to die by demon-cloud/Asian-lady-with-stringy-hair.  Their death may not come right away, but that's because this cursegrudge wants to spread, like a virus.  Some people die because they interact with people who have been to the house.  But wait...that must mean that Rika...might...die?

Is that a flashlight in a creepy attic?  Hell, she deserves what she gets.

The acting in Ju-On: The Grudge is fairly low-key.  The normal characters seem to act fairly realistically, which was nice, but their parts were not overly dramatic.  I liked Megumi Okina in the lead role, if only because she seemed suitably scared; she is that rare case of a horror movie character acting more frightened than a normal person would in the same circumstances.  Yuya Ozeki and Takako Fuji played the creepy ghost people (Cat Boy and Hair Girl, respectively), and they were fine.  There's not a whole lot of acting going on, but they can hold stares and poses pretty effectively.

In the director's cut, this shot lasts ten minutes

Misaki Itô was okay as Hitomi, the girl from the office building.  I don't like her character very much, but she seemed suitably frightened.  Misa Uehara gave what I felt was the best performance in the film, that of Izumi, the daughter of the lead detective.  She looked absolutely ragged and exhausted by fear in her vignette.  Hers was probably the least subtle performance in the movie, but it was nice to see something a little more emotional in this otherwise quietly acted movie.

Man, I wish she was calling for Gamera in this scene.  That would have been awesome.

Ju-On: The Grudge is the third film in the Ju-On series, and from what I can tell, they're all pretty much the same thing.  That may be because Takashi Shimizu wrote and directed them all.  Of course, he also directed the American remake (and its first sequel).  Like it's American sister, Ju-On: The Grudge suffers from pacing problems.  The editing is decent, which means that the scary scenes were handled well, but they were too spaced out for most of the film.  The budget for this movie was also pretty low, so the CGI of the GrudgeMonster as a black cloud looked kind of weird and the whole fingers-in-your-hair gag didn't look all that great.  Most of the acting in the film was unmemorable, but I was surprised to find that I liked two of the featured characters; after hating everyone in The Grudge, I consider that a significant improvement.  While I wasn't a big fan of the pacing in this movie, I have to admit that there were some striking images.  I would pee my pants (just a little bit) if I looked underneath my table at a restaurant and saw this:

"Is it time for me to murder you yet?  How about now?"

The more famous creepy moments (the ones you see in the trailer) are still noteworthy, but I liked the more subtle ones, like Cat Boy under the table.  Most of the script doesn't live up to those weird images, but the last two vignettes had a bizarre supernatural vibe to them that fit very well with the antagonists.

So what is it about the last two vignettes that made such a big difference?  They were what I like to call "extremely Japanese."  In other words, they were bizarre but interesting.

"Is it okay if I take your underwear to replenish the vending machine downstairs?"

The killers in Ju-On: The Grudge open the storytelling door to supernatural stuff, and it was cool to see the narrative take advantage of that fact.  This story was told out of chronological order, and it covered a large number of years, so it was interesting to see how much perspective the lens of time gives the main events in this story.  Specifically, it was interesting to see how the curse can be delayed and avoided, and the price of that act.  I also thought that the weird time-shifting worked pretty well here, because the two people involved were father and daughter; it doesn't make sense, but hey, it's close enough for a Japanese script. 

...as is this: Grrrudge Cats!

Just as important as the influx of weird supernatural stuff into the story was the way the curse was treated.  It would have been very easy to set this up as a mystery that the main character had to unravel.  And they did that, to a certain extent.  However, the cause of the curse was shown briefly during the opening credits.  Without that mystery hanging over the story, it allowed the characters a little more room to breathe and gave them some more interesting paths to take.  One of my favorite parts of this movie is the (completely ridiculous and, therefore, perfectly Japanese) realization that peeking through your fingers --- like the way some people watch horror movies --- lets people see the GrudgeMonsters.  The concept was introduced with someone at an old folk's home playing peekaboo with Cat Boy (FYI, Japanese for "peekaboo" appears to be "Ny ny ny ny...Blah!"), and it led to a couple of very cool visual moments toward the end of the movie.

"Trust me, this is the only way you want to see The Grudge"

So, I guess the only mildly important question that remains is how Ju-On: The Grudge compares to The Grudge.  Both movies share the same basic story, the same basic run-time, the same actors playing the ghostly killers, and the same director, so it's not surprising that they are very similar.  And, for the first two-thirds of the film, "very similar" means "for all intents and purposes, identical." 

In the American version, she stands on the other side of the elevator

And, if you read my review of The Grudge, you can imagine how pissed off that made me.  But then the last two vignettes pop up and added some much-needed variety.  Those two bits were not included (for the most part) in the American version, even though they were definitely the most interesting bits.  They were weird, atmospheric, and fairly unique.  Does that make up for a movie that is 67% crap?  No, they would have needed to be something closer to Ballstastically Awesome to make up for the rest of this story, but they did drag the film up from "absolutely wretched" to "Oh, I get why they remade this."  In the end, I suppose that's all I was hoping to get.

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.