Creepy spirits still wait in the dark.
The Japanese have a penchant for stringy-haired, chalky-faced, murderous women, and the box office proves that America does too. Just look at Gore Verbinski's remake of the J-horror success
Ringu
, translation
The Ring
, and now Takashi Shimizu's second installment of his American redux of
Ju-on
,
The Grudge 2
.
Shimizu smartly blends creepy sound design and psychologically piercing imagery with a WB cast
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sure to please the teen set. A scary movie devoid of gore,
The Grudge 2
is a perfect horror film for those who cover their eyes at the first sign of trouble or who are still afraid of the dark.
The critical assumption of the series is, "When someone dies in a terrible rage, a grudge is born" and grows, consuming all, even the innocent, who cross its path.
After a wife gets her neck snapped by her husband and then watches him drown their child and cat, the trio of murdered souls haunt the house of their demise. In the first
Grudge
, Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
) unknowingly picks the Japanese house of the damned as her new vacation home. Needless to say, she, her boyfriend and his mother don't all make it out alive, and, unfortunately for Karen, escaping the house is not an escape from its curse.
The sequel blends three story lines together in a shameless setup for
The Grudge 3
, revealing that not even post-9.11 security can keep an angry Japanese woman out of the US. Karen's sister, Aubrey (played by
Joan of Arcadia
's Amber Tamblyn), travels to Tokyo to bring Karen home. This is not to be, and Aubrey, a disposable
***image2***
vehicle for plot exposition, is consumed by the unrelenting grudge.
In an unoriginal but marginally successful choice, Shimizu plays with time, interweaving Aubrey's plight with that of three high school girls chased by the curse and an American family destined to replicate
The Shining
. As the stories unfold, the actual timeline of events reveals precious little about the curse itself but does have at least one twist up its sleeve.
What
The Grudge 2
lacks in narrative, it makes up for in horror devices of the highest and lowest orders. A hot, underage blonde prances around in her underwear only to be scared out of her wits while naked in the shower or alone in the locker room. Conversely, a subtle flicker of ghostly white or an echo of crackling sound design will keep audiences looking out of the corner of their eyes for days to come. If you're 12 and having a sleepover, this is the perfect scary movie.
