The Grudge 2 Year: 2006 Director: Takeshi Shimizu Written by: Stephen Susco Threat: Ghosts Weapon of Choice: Fear Based upon: none Color/B&W/3D: Color Language: English Country of Origin: USA IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
The Grudge

Rish's Reviews
You may find this hard to believe, but I've seen a lot of horror films. Of those, 2004's The Grudge stands at the top of the list of scariest movies I've ever seen. Really. I said quite a bit about why in my review at the time, but I could certainly say more, maybe even write an essay about the flicks that scared me the most and why. Hmmm.
This 2006 sequel to, well, a hit American remake of a Japanese sequel, tells the story of . . . well, three stories, actually. The first is the sister (Amber Tamblyn) of the main character of the original, going to Japan to investigate what happened to her now-hospitalized sibling (Sarah Michelle Gellar). The second is of three teen schoolgirls two years later who dare themselves to go into what I suppose I can call "The Grudge House," and then are tainted (love that word) by the curse ever more. The third tale takes place in Chicago sometime after that, where a family (particularly a young boy) in an apartment building discovers something amiss, something threatening to turn them against each other, which seems to originate with their mysterious next door neighbour. Also, the journalist from the first film tries to find out what's going on with the curse, where it originated, and if there's a way to save himself, since he's gone into the House as well. These stories are intercut, and as the film progresses, we see how they are connected to each other.
It featured the same writer and same director as the original, and like I said, The Grudge 2 is actually three stories, intertwined by . . . ah, who am I kidding? They weren't intertwined. They weren't even the same kind of stories. As my attempt to sum up attests, this was an ambitious film, jam-packed with enough story to fill two and a half Grudge sequels (or better yet, two Grudge sequels and an unrelated third horror film). And therein lies a great deal of the problem.
There's an old adage in writing circles: a bad director can ruin a good script, but no director can save a bad one. The direction in Grudge 2 was good, pacing was nice, and the scares are many and well-delivered. No, I'm afraid I have to lay the blame for this movie's failure at the feet of screenwriter Steven Susco. Too bad. I read an interview where he talked about the many different ideas he and the producers had for a sequel, and the many drafts he wrote, both starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and without her, and I guess this finished product is a combination of many of those ideas.
And that's a mistake. Simplicity, especially in Horror, is often better than complexity (not all the time, I'm well aware, but a lot of the time), and it's easier to cover all the bases and satisfy your character arcs if there's only a handful of characters and only, say, three or four bases.
The Grudge 2 felt fragmented, and unresolved. It boasted a nonlinear plot that had to have been DESIGNED to confuse audiences (I say that because, knowing a little something about screenwriting, nobody would write stories that jump around in time the way this one does, telling the events on page 80 first, then going on to pages 45-52, then going to page 1, but not for very long before flashing back to pages 52 through 60), since one character's identity is deliberately obscured until (literally) the last scene in the film.
This film does as 99% of horror sequels do: attempt to explain some of the mysteries of the original film. While that aspect didn't really work in The Grudge 2, it worked better than most do, and wasn't part of what was wrong with the film.
When the movie works, it's really, really scary. When it doesn't, it's just confusing. The two ghosts/presences/beings from the first film are still scary, though not all that is done with them works. Tyranist had a real problem with the introduction of new ghosts/beings/presences, and though I don't agree that they WEREN'T scary, they were definitely less so than the tried-and-true ones.
There's something about seeing a flick like this (speaking about Grudge 2 now), that's empowering and healthy in an odd way. Facing fears, being able to withstand the stress on the mental synapses, etc., etc., and walking out of the theatre whole. I am seriously freaked out by ghosts, and for some reason, I enjoy being freaked out.
And what is scary is subjective, really. It amazes me when people tell me that a movie I found terrifying (let's say, The Sixth Sense, or The Shining, or The Polar Express, for example), but were freaked out by Gremlins, or Child's Play, or Blair Witch Project. I guess we could talk about that for a long, long time.
There were some lovely ladies in the cast, but that matters little when you don't care about them.
That's not to say this is a terrible film. I've seen many horror films much worse than this one (even this year), but this one had the potential to be quite good, but really wasn't. I really like Sam Raimi's production company Ghost House Films, and even though I didn't like this film much, it was a scary enough experience (in the theatre) that I'll probably go see Grudge III. You know it's going to happen.
Posted: January 13, 2007

The tyranist's thoughts
I didn't care for this movie. And that's a shame because I really liked the previous entry in the series. Although, I don't think I liked the Japanese version as much either as that first American The Grudge either. It's unfortunate that it has peaked already. I think there is a ton of potential for this kind of story and really, they just sort of threw it away here.
Specifically, of the three stories they offered up as one in this movie, I really only liked the one that was a direct continuation of the first. The one in which Amber Tamblyn goes to Japan to see why her sister hasn't called lately. I could have loved an hour and a half of that if they'd made it.
The middle story (chronologically, not the way they showed it in the film--in the film, they were all mixed together, probably because they didn't want audiences to realise that they'd really only made a little tiny bit of a Grudge movie and that the other shite they were offering up wasn't really related at all) fails in that they suddenly introduce ghosts other than the original two. That made no sense whatsoever. As I understood the rules of the world, it was really only the first incident that had any power whatsoever. That and the new ghosts were simply lame. Including one character that turned out to be a ghost that actually made me groan out loud when they revealed the twist.
As for the last of the stories, it had so little to do with The Grudge that I really sort of wish they'd made it as a different movie. I might even have liked it then. Here, though, it just sort of stood out as being completely incongruous.
In the end, it was glossy and it had a couple functional scares, but it really seemed to have missed the entire atmospher of the first, and in so doing, lost all of the appeal the series might have had for me.
Posted: January 13, 2003

Total Skulls: 27

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?