The Grudge 2

                                 Aubrey, don't go in that house.


The Grudge 2, I must admit, was an odd choice for this October. This was, more or less, a choice deriving from a sudden interest after gazing at the box at Blockbuster. I remember actually seeing this in the theater (barely), and my feelings afterward were pretty much in league with what the majority of horror fans (and fans of the first film and Shimizu's own Ju-on from Japan) felt: that it blew. I just remember this feeling of revulsion, as if I wanted to wash the film off. Not sure if it had to do with the way Sarah Michele Gellar is unceremoniously dismissed from the sequel (her character is treated like shit and dropped from a hospital building right in front of her visiting sister) or her "replacement" for this sequel in Amber Tamblyn (who was hot at this time coming off of Joan of Arcadia), not my choice for a leading actress in a Ju-on type film. Her awkwardness and pouty face are beautifully used in the show, House, but in The Grudge 2 I just found her a bit annoying and dull. I think, at the time, that the way the movie shifts from Japan to America was jarring, too.

I try to be as honest as possible and all because a movie is critically maligned and considered such a load of crap doesn't mean I will just side with popular opinion and spend a large amount of time berating it. There were some moments in this sequel that hit paydirt with me. I always felt that Shimizu was money when it comes to establishing his ghouls in every type of place imaginable. There isn't a corner of a ceiling, crack in the wall, crawlspace, closet, or window that the ghoul mother and son can't appear. Whether under a school desk or the sheets of a bed, the grudge can emerge and if you are "infected" you're shit out of luck.

I went next door and saw something in the window...eyes.

Alternating stories in both Tokyo and Chicago are presented, like in Shimizu's own Ju-on, as a fractured narrative, both stories, and the characters, tormented by the grudge shown as if unlayering the mystery of Koyoko and her origin and how it is spreading like a plague starting to epidemic. There may not be an end in sight since the grudge's infection has now moved abroad as seen in the Chicago apartment complex.



It will not stop. It will grow and destroy everything it touches. It will spread beyond the house. There can be no end to what has started.

I do like how there's a further backstory to Koyoko, although I imagine this sentiment isn't felt by those who consider exposition on an evil a bit overrated. I like how Tamblyn's Aubrey, with help from young Tokyo resident small-time journalist, Eason (Edisen Chen, who does well with the role he's given, a sensitive soul who lends a much needed assistance to Aubrey, a foreigner in desperate need of help), is able to confront Koyoko's mother, after learning from an occult expert (Eason's friend) that she would remove evil spirits and place them in her daughter (this is a disturbing revelation, the fact that, as a child, young Koyoko was a vessel to hold evil spirits removed from her mom's clients). Visually, Shimizu fogs the lens and utilizes POV (and mimicking the blinking of eyes) to convey the mother suddenly seeing her daughter in ghoul form haunting her to death. It is a stunning scene that highlights what the director can do even as the stories and characters fail to equal such visual skill.

I loved the red light photo room sequence where Eason is taking a look at some photographs of the Koyoko house as she, in the form of ink (this is flat cool, especially with the hue of red that mood lights the room), eventually forms into a head and then her body, as she rises from the water of the tray to scare the poor kid to death. Eason also scans an interview of the detective of the case involving Michele Gellar's Karen and after hearing a sound (the throaty groan, that Koyoko utterance that is now quite iconic,  memorable even if the movies that feature her may not deserve it), sees Koyoko's face in a window. Lots of slight figures of Koyoko in the background with characters in the foreground unaware or ill-prepared on how to escape her infection, that is always welcome by me...there's just something spellbinding about establishing a dangerous ghoul's shape from behind victims.

Something bad lives there. Something bad that's making everything else bad here.

What did you do? What did you bring here?
It followed me here. They followed me here.

While I think the Tokyo part of the movie works reasonably well (the best visual images come from here and director Shimizu seems more inspired when we are in his part of the world), even as Tamblyn fails to interest me at all, I never thought the Chicago apartment portion clicked. When you have a 100 minute movie with two alternating stories, one is bound to overshadow the other. I think the idea works. We see that the infection doesn't stay contained in a house, but it follows the people who either willingly or inadvertently come in contact with the place where the horrific incident involving Koyoko and her child happened. Probably it would have been best to just feature the Tokyo story and save the American story for another film, but the point was to establish that a certain character--part of both the Chicago and Tokyo stories--links them, the twist important in also commenting on Aubrey's fate. This film also kind of informs us of the fates of anyone who succumbs to Koyoko, as evident by the creepy conversation between Allison (Arielle Kebbel) and her American advisor in Tokyo.

Shimizu loves seductively lensing teenage girls in their private school uniform skirts (and there's plenty of Teresa Palmer showing off her legs, even in bra and panties at one point in the girls' locker room, not to mention, Sarah Roemer in her tantalizing cheerleader uniform), and has one of the teenage girls (she Japanese) in Tokyo preparing to have sex with her hunky American man, denied when Koyoko takes her off into a mirror (one of the few scenes, to me, that doesn't quite work involving Koyoko and her pop-out-of-nowhere appearances). The scene at the end where a girl "poofs" away inside her hoody, Koyoko emerging to grab the arms of the kid in Chicago, is really rather comical to me. Another amusing scene (that still manages to be rather eerie) has Aubrey riding in a bus to meet Koyoko's mother, an elder passenger playing peekaboo with ghost son whose reflection appears in a mirror next to her.

I guess The Grudge 2 was a catalyst in the demise of Japanese-inspired American remakes. I haven't seen The Grudge 3 yet, but when you see direct-to-dvd fare like this and those Pulse sequels, milking whatever value might remain of the first films, the writing's on the wall that perhaps there was a short shelf life for American films cribbing ideas and stories from Japanese horror. Shimizu, in my mind, judging by his terrific Reincarnation and the criminally underrated Marebito, can easily overcome this minor misfire. I can't wait to see his 2011 film, Tormented.