 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
|
|
 email this review to a friend
The Grudge is the kind of scary that has you clinging to your girlfriend so she won't jump out of her seat and that has you looking over your shoulder when you're all alone in the dark that night. It's the kind of horror that takes its nails and digs into your skin, delving into the most remote psychological fears you possess. Simply, it's the scariest movie in quite some time. Then again, what else can you expect from executive producer and famed Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi (besides webspinning guys in tights)? The film concerns a young American couple, Karen and Doug (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jason Behr, respectively), living in Tokyo because Doug's biggest dream in life was to travel abroad. Karen works as a nurse at a care center, and when the woman Yoko (thoughts of The Beatles flooded my mind; played by Yoko Maki) who looks after an elderly lady with lethargy named Emma (Grace Zabriskie) doesn't show up for work one morning, Karen is sent to her house to take care of her. However, things quickly become spookier than Gellar actually accepting the part of Daphne in Scooby-Doo. A creepy-lookin' kid named Toshio Sakei (Yuya Ozeki) shows up out of nowhere, there's banging on the walls, the house creaks, spectral mists float into demonic forms, and before you know it, Karen's gone into shock and eventually gets the heck out of there. Once she's out and gives her report to the police, headed by Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi), she finds that the ghosts keep following her and, thoroughly freaked out, she discovers that once you go into the house you can never check out. Therefore, she goes on a mission to find out what exactly happened in the house and what could've left behind such a dark emotional stain within its walls. I'm a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV series, not the movie, which was absolute crap), which is the best thing since sliced bread, so I know that Sarah Michelle Gellar can act, and act well. Don't let the spooks and specters fool you. If Gellar wants to shed her Buffy skin, she's taking a step in the right direction with The Grudge. Here she proves that she can more than hold her own in a feature film, and does a thoroughly good job. Jason Behr is fine as her beau, even though he has hardly any screentime, and I'm pleased as punch that Sam Raimi got his brother Ted a role in the flick. Ted Raimi has also played Hoffman in his brother's Spider-Man movies, but here he actually gets a real role and gives a pretty good performance. Bill Pullman also has a relatively small part, but it's got to be his best role in years. No matter Gellar, Raimi, or Pullman...the real stars of The Grudge are its scares. Without them, even if Gellar gave the best performance since Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, the film would be nothing. As it is, The Grudge has a pretty thin story completely buoyed by plenty of frightening moments strung together excellently by director Takashi Shimizu (who wrote and directed Ju-on: The Grudge, the terrifying Japanese film that this is based on). It could be said that the movie is nothing but a series of one-act plays in which essentially the same thing happens over and over again, and at times when it lulls, it certainly feels that way, but Shimizu is an extremely talented director, one that can create tension through atmosphere instead of blood and gore. Us western folks need to take a cue from the east and actually craft scary scary movies. Shimizu's atmosphere is that of a perpetual rainy day...not that it actually rains in the movie, just that a somber mood courses through the entire thing. Luckily, it succeeds in being somber unlike another of this year's horror flicks, The Village, which was so somber it became melodramatic and then camp and then just plain crap. Shimizu also knows how to move his camera around skillfully, and you can never be sure what's around the corner. There are some absolutely terrifying moments when things are hiding in the shadows, nearly out of frame, and you really have to have a trained eye to spot some of them. In fact, though I got one in an elevator that scared the heck out of me, I'm pretty sure that I missed a few. Stephen Susco's screenplay isn't filled with any kind of real emotional resonance through which the audience can really connect to the movie, and that is perhaps The Grudge's biggest flaw, the one thing that keeps it from being as good as it should be. The main characters aren't much other than fodder for the ghosties, and that's disappointing when The Grudge is as scary as it is...well, just take a look at their names. Karen and Doug. That's about as nondescript and vague as you can get. Still, he manages to write some very disturbing moments, almost all of which have been directly copied from Ju-on: The Grudge, and while a little is lost in translation, things are just as effective in English as they were in Japanese. --Full review at REELPICKS.CJB.N email this review to a friend
Comment on this Review:
 Subscribe to MatchFlick Movie Reviews through RSS |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
RSS | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | About MatchFlick® | Press | Contact Us | FAQs
Partnership and Advertising Opportunities | Movie Database | Merchandise ©2004-2008 MatchFlick®. All rights reserved. ©MOVIE IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT PROTECTED AND THE PROPERTY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS |