★★
A house is cursed by a vengeful ghost that dooms those who enter it with a violent death
Classification: 15
I don't know much about The Grudge, haven't seen the original, haven't seen the remake, I honestly get it confused with The Ring most of the time cause of the visual similarities of creepy girls with long black hair. So I went into this latest American reboot/remake completely blind and was interested in the non-linear stories of the interconnected people bound by the curse of Kayako Saeki. The Grudge follows the same narrative format as its spiritual predecessors and injects some familiar visual styles into its grim aesthetic but pretty much after the first thirty minutes, the intrigue to the mystery has evaporated and it's pretty easy to tell where the story is heading next.
Beginning with Andrea Riseborough's Detective Muldoon arriving in rural Pennsylvania, she and her partner Detective Goodman, a grizzled, chain-smoking Demián Bichir investigate a decomposed body in the woods, the film begins to unfold a mystery over a cursed house, 44 Reyburn Drive that has a dark connection to many horrific murders. Initially, it works starting from Muldoon, moving into the past covering the realtors of the house played by John Cho and Betty Gilpin, then covering a storyline about the residents that came next, all tying back to how the curse or Grudge incidentally ensares its claws into so many different lives. The multiple perspectives do break the initial morose feeling the film begins with but The Grudge just becomes reliant on the same story beat. The house is haunted and the ghost will kill you, so despite the differing personalities from the cast, everything just boils down to a grisly death scene involving spooky ghosts, jump scares and blood.
Muldoon and Goodman's story reminded of the classic western gothic vibe of True Detective but without any of the nuance or grander storytelling. All the performances kinda just fade into the murky blur of the film's visual style bar Jacki Weaver who goes for some old fashioned hammed up overacting and screaming as Lorna Moody, an assisted suicide consultant staying in the home during the timeline before Muldoon. William Sadler, who plays Goodman's former partner-driven mad by the previous investigation at Reyburn Drive also breaks from the pack but mostly because he's doing his best Mason Verger impression. Everyone else comfortably glides through their archetypes, doing the standard leg work to make character's bearable, writer-director Nicolas Pesce's script giving each character a "sympathetic" backstory. Muldoon is a cancer widow, John Cho and Betty Gilpin's characters fear for their unborn baby's health, Moody attempts to console a bereft man who has a wife with dementia. The horror of The Grudge never explicitly ties back into the character's insecurities or fears, making the supernatural presence irrelevant from the realities Pesce wants to ground the film in.
The horror relies on a standard bag of tricks; creepy ghosts, jump scares, hallucinations and atmosphere, it's all pretty much the same. A character gets isolated, build tension in an eerie location, have the lights flicker, a figure walks past behind them, then either a fake-out jump scare or monster shot with accompanying music stinger. The Grudge runs like clockwork, with no deviation or creativity to formula and none of it is actually terrifying, it becomes disappointing b-Movie horror as the more exposition about haunted houses and ghost are thrown at it you. The film never properly explains the reasons for the curse, the monsters and murders; it's just the same thing over and over and it's not scary because we can't fathom the reasoning. The whole film is a one-trick pony and the trick isn't even that clever, as if the pony's talent was eating hay and taking a shit. You seriously know what's coming around every corner and with that boring horror, Pesce loses momentum in the mystery and the character arcs. Besides Muldoon by the end, even though that storyline has to pull some last-minute narrative resonance at the end that doesn't land. It's a carousel of unrewarding, unsatisfying misery that can't creatively distinguish itself and uses the gimmick of the Grudge curse to drag itself further and further until there is nothing left.
Again I have no cultural connection to The Grudge, but this film does little to stoke a fire for any newcomer or horror aficionado, but for a January released horror film I could do way worse (I saw The Turning just before this which actually boosted my enjoyment of this film immensely). Performances are average at the best, no one's really putting their worst forward but it's the predictable and repetitive nature of Pesce's horror and the story that lets The Grudge down. It's substandard execution of every element and even with an amusing final scene that speaks to Pesce's talent, none of the monotony that leads to it is worth it.
Director: #NicolasPesce
Cast: #AndreaRiseborough, #DemiánBichir, #JohnCho, #BettyGilpin, #LinShaye, #JackiWeaver, #WilliamSadler, #FrankieFaison
Release Date: January 24th 2020
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database
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