The Grudge (North American) review

By Jude Pinto

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**This review contains spoilers! You have been warned!**

Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jason Behr, Clea DuVall, Bill Pullmen

Directed by:Takashi Shimizu

We all know that American remakes of Asian films haven't had the best track record over the years. The Grudge is no different. Only difference with this movie is, it takes place in Japan. Not sure if that even matters.

The movie starts of Bill Pullmen's character (Peter Kirk) jumping off his balcony, head first into the ground, killing him instantly. For some reason, his wife played by Rosa Blasi, takes longer than usual to respond to what just happened. I don't know why. Maybe shock factor? Maybe crappy directing? Who cares?

Next we get introduced to the character(s) Yoko (Yoko Maki), who helps take care of Emma Williams(Grace Zabriskie), a woman who basically can't do anything except make strange faces (or tries) when she senses or sees anything paranormal. Oh and sleeps 23 hours a day. After Yoko tucks Emma in to bed, she goes about her daily duties of cleaning up the house, which is a total mess. Apparently, ghosts like garbage. As Yoko starts to climb the stairs, she hears a noise coming from one of the rooms, so, she has to go investigate. She notices something moving up in the attic, and decides to checks it out. You can figure out the rest.

Enter Karen Davis (Sarah Micelle), and her boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr). Doug is studying in Japan and Karen decided to tag along because she loves him sooooooo much. Karen gets asked by the agency where she works, if she'd like to take care of Emma Williams since Yoko didn't show up for work. She accepts. When Karen gets there, the house is in an even bigger mess. Good job Yoko.

After giving an erotic sponge bath to Emma, and tucking her into bed, Karen starts to clean the house. After hearing something from the top rooms, she...You know what she does. When she enters the room, she notices a closet which is covered duct tape. She decides not open it, but as she's walking out, she hears movement coming from behind the closet door. She's hesitant to open it at first, but after hearing a cat's meow, she just has to open it! Don't want to let kitty die, now do we?

To her surprise, there is a cat, but there's some strange Japanese boy (Toshio) holding it. There's also a diary, which she manages to pick up. She immediately calls her boyfriend in hopes he can do something about the boy. I guess Karen forgot about Japan having police.

Karen then notices something moving in Emma's room. She rushes to help, only to find Emma with her strange face staring into a corner of the wall. Instead of looking in that direction, Karen keeps asking her if she's alright. When Karen finally decides to see what Emma's been looking at for the past minute, we get a glimpse of hair. Very long hair. I think that was supposed to be scary.

Then the next scene goes back in time, to when the Williams family decided to buy the house. We see Emma, her son Matthew Williams (William Mapother), his wife Jennifer Williams (Clea DuVall) and the sister Susan Williams (KaDee Strickland). As they are being shown around the house by a Japanese real-estate agent who does nothing but walk around pointing to things, Emma goes missing. The family goes in search of her. They find Emma upstairs, looking up at the ceiling in one of the rooms.

While everyone is upstairs, the real-estate agent hears something in the bathroom. He finds the bathtub filled with black water and decides to empty it. As he reaches down to unplug it, a hand grabs him and tries to pull him in, but thanks to his mad house-selling skills, he escapes. Oh, and he doesn't mention this to the family. What a dick. The family ends up buying the house, only to be picked off one by one by the ghost.

Then it cuts back to Karen. Her employer finds Emma dead and Karen scared half to death. I don't know why the employer even showed up. The police finally come and start their investigation. They find the bodies of Matthew and Jennifer in the attic along with a part of Yoko's jaw.

After being released from the hospital, Karen begins her own investigation about the ghosts, instead of getting the hell out of there. She searches the internet and finds a newspaper article about how a family was murdered there, and under that, an article about Peter Kirk, the man who jumped out of his balcony. For whatever reason, she decides to investigate Peter Kirk's death. While looking through some pictures of Peter and his wife, Karen notices the same Japanese woman in every picture. Turns out that woman in the picture, is the same person who got murdered in the house. Karen quickly takes this new and exciting information to the police chief. But when she gets there, she asks him a question instead. He then tells her how the house was bad news to being with and how he sucks at his job. Ok, fine, he didn't say that second part.

Anyway, the police chief figures the only way to make everything right is to go burn down the house. It should solve allHOOOOOOO~! of his problems. So, he buys some kerosene, and heads to the house. As he tries to burn down the house, the ghost kills him. At the same time, Karen's employer gets eaten by a zombie Yoko. Yeah, I have no idea what's going on with that.

When Karen returns home, she finds out her boyfriend, Doug, went looking for her at the haunted house. Wooo, movie's almost over! Anyway, when she gets there, Karen finds out why Peter Kirk killed himself, and how and why those murderers took place. When Karen finally finds Doug, he's dead. But before she gets a chance to cry, that ghost thingy starts to come after her. She tries to drag her boyfriend out of the house before that ghost thingy gets her, but to no avail. Instead, she burns the damn house down, yet some how survives in the end...sorta.

This movie should be avoided at all costs. There are so many plot holes, and things wrong with this movie, I'm surprised they even decided to make it. Man, I can't wait for the Grudge 2 in 2006.