Review | The Grudge movie review: American sequel to J-horror classic trades deadly ambience for grotesque scares
- Based on the Japanese Ju-On horror franchise, The Grudge relies on shock value rather than the sense of foreboding in the original film
- Noisy jump scares and flashy visuals take precedence, while the anger and suffering that triggered the initial curse goes entirely unexplored
2/5 stars
Less an American remake than a sidequel, existing in parallel with the long-running Japanese horror franchise, Nicolas Pesce’s The Grudge follows Andrea Riseborough’s small-town cop as she investigates a series of mysterious deaths connected to the same house.
Takashi Shimizu’s original Ju-On mythology, including the malevolent ghost Kayako, are acknowledged solely as the source of an evil curse that is unwittingly brought back to the United States. Unfortunately, little of what unfolds can muster the unsettling atmosphere that has sustained Shimizu’s series for the past two decades.
Arriving in a new town, burdened with a young son and grieving the death of her husband, detective Muldoon (Riseborough) is partnered with the grizzled Goodman (Demián Bichir) to investigate a petrified body found in the woods.
The death is soon linked to a suburban house, where a woman killed her daughter, husband and herself two years earlier, after returning from a business trip to Tokyo. Goodman refuses to take the case, insisting that the house curses all who enter it, but Muldoon cannot resist investigating, and soon enough, she too is plagued by ghastly apparitions.
The 30-year-old director, Pesce, is no stranger to adapting Japanese properties for Western audiences. His previous feature, Piercing, is considered a mostly successful reworking of Ryu Murakami’s darkly nihilistic 1994 novel of the same name.
What his film lacks, however, is a discernible kinship with its source material. Shimizu’s lo-fi original unnerved its audience, for budgetary reasons as much as aesthetic concerns, through the power of suggestion rather than grotesque on-screen bravado. As the series evolved, and Shimizu expanded the mythology behind his creation, that central tone remained largely intact.
Pesce’s film lacks anything discernibly Shimizu-esque. Individual moments of tension materialise, only to be undercut by noisy jump scares or needlessly flashy visuals, while the anger and suffering that triggered the original curse goes entirely unexplored.
In its latest incarnation, The Grudge is a serviceable, yet hollow experience.
The Grudge is streaming on Netflix.
