Review of The Grudge 2 (2006) by Amoviecritic — 15 Oct 2006

The Ju On films were never about storyline, they were more about scaring the audience as much as possible. They are done in episodes, simply going from one character to another to watch their bizarre, scary deaths one after another.

I was disappointed with The Grudge, because not only did it lack the suspense and horror of the Japanese original, but they tried too hard to add a plot and romance and it just ended up bogging the movie down.

The Grudge 2 is more along the lines of the Japanese versions. There's less plot, and more scares. The scares themselves are also much sharper and less "PG-13" (In fact, they really stretch that rating here) than its predecessor.

Some scenes are completely scary and really suspenseful. Yet there are lots of jumps as well. If you like the Ju On films better than you liked 2004's Grudge remake, you'll really like The Grudge 2.

Fans of the first Grudge may not be as into The Grudge 2, though. Compared to the first Grudge, this one is definitely less of a "movie." Somewhat worse acting, less star power, worse dialogue, less plot and less structure makes it seem more like a "right to DVD sequel" at times than something that was made with the same care as its predecessor.

But that wasn't the case. The case was simply that they wanted to return this series to its roots of being, primarily, a fright fest. That said, though, due to the need to keep the PG-13 rating, (therefore keeping the ghosts mostly off-screen, unlike the Japanese versions, where these corpses are crawling all over the place,) it's still not as scary or suspenseful as the Japanese versions and unfortunately, the movie's plot twist at the end WILL confuse people who are not aware that the 3 stories each take place years apart from each other.

(Something the movie never makes clear.) The Grudge 2 also lacks a huge climactic scene like The Grudge's stair crawl. Still, though, this was a scary movie and a step in the right direction for these remakes, if they choose to continue them.

If they do, though, (and I can't stress this enough) they should really go for the R-rating because building suspense by having these ghosts fully onscreen (especially Kayoko, in all her blood-covered glory,) is more effective than simply having these ghosts just jump out and scare you.