{"id":45653,"date":"2020-01-06T11:19:47","date_gmt":"2020-01-06T16:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=45653"},"modified":"2020-01-06T11:20:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T16:20:54","slug":"the-grudge-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2020\/01\/the-grudge-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grudge Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\nnever saw the 2004 version of \u201cThe Grudge\u201d or the 2002 Japanese horror film\nthat served as its basis. I didn\u2019t even watch either film for research before\nseeing this new film. I figured that if this film was going the remake route,\nit might hurt to know when the scares were coming. Similar research tainted my\nenjoyment of last year\u2019s remake of \u201cPet Sematary,\u201d as I waited with waning\ninterest for John Lithgow to descend that staircase. It turns out I was worried\nabout nothing, for two reasons. The first is that this is a sequel, not a\nremake, so the scares as far as I can tell are not direct repeats. The second\nis that the scares in this movie would be ineffective regardless of spoilers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

            The\nfilm opens in 2004 with live-in nurse Fiona Landers (Tara Westwood) leaving a\ncreepy house in Japan and returning home to her family in America. But it\u2019s too\nlate, she\u2019s already infected with the Grudge curse, which apparently causes\npeople to murder their loved ones, and things aren\u2019t going to end well for her\nand her family. Cut to present day, where Detective Muldoon (Andrea\nRiseborough) and her son are starting over in a new town (the son\u2019s line,\n\u201cDaddy and I never finished [this art project]\u201d tells you all you need to\nknow). Muldoon\u2019s first day on the job sees her and her partner Detective Goodman\n(Demian Bichir) investigate a mysterious death, which is linked to the Landers\nhouse. Goodman refuses to investigate anything having to do with the house, but\nMuldoon is suspicious and curious. She pries into the house\u2019s history and\ndoesn\u2019t like what she finds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nfilm spends quality time filling us in on some incidents in the time since the\nLanders family. It\u2019s just as well because these segments are actually quite\ncompelling compared to the minimal Landers story and the hackneyed Muldoon one.\nJohn Cho and Betty Gilpin play a pair of married real estate agents tasked with\nselling the house. They\u2019re about to have a baby, but the baby is predisposed to\na disease, and they\u2019re not sure if they should keep it. It\u2019s a well-written,\nwell-acted storyline, but this being the movie that it is, everything they\u2019re\ndiscussing is probably going to be moot very soon. Frankie Faison and Lin Shaye\nplay an elderly couple who move into the house specifically because it\u2019s\nhaunted, which the husband interprets as meaning life after death for the wife,\nwho is sick in more ways than one. He tries to hire an assisted suicide\nspecialist (Jacki Weaver) to expediate the process, but the wife is too wrapped\nup in talking to ghosts to be ruled mentally competent to kill herself, which\nisn\u2019t to say she isn\u2019t capable of killing. In addition to ghosts, the house is\nalso haunted by Goodman\u2019s ex-partner (William Sadler), who is obsessed with the\ncurse, but not to the point where he tries to do anything useful like destroy\nit or warn people about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nflashback storylines carry more dignity than \u201cThe Grudge\u201d deserves, but at the\nend of the day this is just a silly horror movie where characters creep around\nhouses investigating strange noises until a ghost jumps out and screams at\nthem. These beings have mastered the ability to cross planes of existence, and\nthey use this miraculous power to give well-meaning people jump scares. Come to\nthink of it, there\u2019s no reason for the ghosts to exist at all, it\u2019s the regular\npeople carrying the curse who are doing all the gratuitously violent work. I\nknow the movie needs the ghosts to sell tickets, but would it kill them (again)\nto have more purpose? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Grudge\u201d is rated R for\ndisturbing violence and bloody images, terror and some language. Its running\ntime is 93 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             I never saw the 2004 version of \u201cThe Grudge\u201d or the 2002 Japanese horror film that served as its basis. I didn\u2019t even watch either film… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":45654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}