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Although murky, hoky, and at times ridiculous, Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on showed the potential to be an intelligent genre film. Shimizu’s Hollywood remake fulfills that potential to a degree, tightening up the reverse/sideways chronological narrative and adding a cast — including redoubtable vampire slayer Sarah Michelle Gellar — that can offer more than wistful resignation in the face of unspeakable evil. Unfortunately, The Grudge still suffers from the fatal (for a horror film) flaw of not being scary. The grudge is actually a curse, a lethal evil infecting places where people died in great anger or sorrow. (No surprise that there are post-WW2 places like this in Japan.) Karen (Gellar), an exchange student in Tokyo getting extra credit as a social worker, wanders into one such when she enters a charming house to tend to an elderly American woman. Shimizu unreels the creepy child, the black cat, the croaking phone calls, and other bogus scare tactics from the original, but more intriguing is the cultural conflict and dissociation suggested by the American cast members. Call it Lost in Translation by way of Nightmare on Elm Street or The Shining. That element, plus a small part by Bill Pullman reminiscent of his role in David Lynch’s Lost Highway, earns this film some grudging respect. (88 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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