Review of The Grudge (2019) by Chrismizerak — 04 Jan 2020

I remember seeing the 2004 American version of this story in theaters when I was a kid with my dad, who is an avid horror fan. Believe me, that was indeed a rarity for me as I hardly see horror films, because as I firmly believe in my adulthood, they’re mostly the same old thing.

I remember the creepy girl with the dark hair. I recall Sarah Michelle Gellar starring in it. And…. that’s about it. And that’s exactly the same fate I feel that this “Grudge” is going to fall under.

I remember the little girl with dark hair again, which is sort of a clone of the girl you saw in “The Ring”, wasn’t it? I recall that Jacki Weaver of all people accepted a supporting role in this for some reason.

And…. history is surely going to repeat itself, I’m sure. The problem with this new “Grudge” that Sony Pictures is bestowing upon us is not in terms of the actors not trying or giving it their all.

In fact, the cast does the best it can to make what weak material they all have to work with lift off of the ground. The real symptom infecting this poor creature is a rather common complaint you’ll come across with many horror films, especially those released within this specific timeframe.

This symptom I’m referring to is its severe lack of spontaneity. And this abundant absence of unpredictability is a major crime, especially for a horror film. You would think that a film within this genre would take better advantage of their natural spontaneity to get more scares from the audience and further catch them off guard.

And yet here we are still successfully picking up the inevitable jump scares a good many seconds before they even unfold. This is another modern-day example that proves once again that if you’re going to do an effective horror film, then maybe it should be labeled under a different film genre to get the desired effect.

Maybe that’s why horror flicks usually don’t work for me. Whenever I go into a horror flick, I already know what is going to happen because it’s spoiled by the simple labeling of it being a horror film.

Now this wouldn’t be as big a problem if the film had anything original or distinctive within this story. In recent years, we’ve seen the emergence of horror films such as “Get Out” and “Us” that still tell interesting stories in between all of the scares that are bound to pop up.

What I mean by this is that you can make a horror film work even without the trademark scares you want for a film from this genre. In the case of “The Grudge”, however, there isn’t a single unique bone or organ in this highly conventional and lifeless body.

I could try and put in effort to describe the basic plot behind this story. Unfortunately, no matter what I do to make it sound like its own unique thing, I promise you that everyone reading this will think it’s the same horror film being regurgitated a billion times.

Don’t believe me? Here’s my own brief summary in two sentences. An unusual disease that affects an American woman in Japan is carried over back home to wreak havoc on multiple lives. This includes our main lead, played by Andrea Riseborough, who is a police officer trying to uncover the mysteries surrounding these tragedies and unsurprisingly put a stop to it.

Yes, you can swipe out the names of the characters or the locations for that matter, and it still wouldn’t change a thing. You see, it’s not that this new “Grudge” is incompetently put together or sabotaged by people that didn’t want to be there in the first place.

This is clearly not what’s taking place here. What is evident here was that there wasn’t much material here to begin with. At best, it is heavily uninspired and leaning heavily on what has been done effectively before in far superior works.

At its worst is a dull bore fest that doesn’t justify its existence in any way, shape or form with what it brings to the table. And you know, the standards for horror films have really been raised as of late by the likes of “Get Out”, “Us”, “Hereditary” and “A Quiet Place”.

Films within this genre are getting better at becoming their own unique thing to better please folks who usually aren’t into this specific film genre. And a film like this new version of “The Grudge” may have been somewhat passable as an average time waster about 10 to 15 years ago.

Now however, this kind of structured and manufactured run-of-the-mill horror flick with its dependence on the bare minimum jump scares is just not enough anymore. For a film ironically titled “The Grudge”, this outdated horror flick isn’t even worth getting that steamed over.