Things That Go Cre-e-eak
Grudge is a Creepy Ghost Story

The odds of me NOT seeing a horror movie starring Sarah Michelle Gellar a week before Halloween would be so infinitesimally small that I couldn't even consider missing opening night of The Grudge. I truly miss my weekly dose of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," so the chance to see SMG in a horror film was too good to pass up.

The film takes place in Japan. It begins oddly, with several early scenes that seem to have little or no relevance to each other. It becomes apparent that the director is skipping through the story, jumping ahead and back again, in an effort to give audiences the background information they need only when it becomes essential. After seeing the suicide of Peter (Bill Pullman), the film jumps to a young Japanese girl named Yoko (Yoko Maki) caring for an elderly American woman named Emma (Grace Zabriskie) . As she picks up around the house, she begins to hear noises and follows them. Bad things happen, and the film skips again, back to the beginning when the Americans first arrived at the house.

Geller plays Karen, an American foreign exchange student living with her boyfriend in Japan. She is picking up some social work credits by working for a care center and visiting elderly people in their homes. Soon she is visiting the same house to take care of Emma, because Yoko never checked in at work. The creepiness of the film quickly escalates as Karen notices something is definitely wrong (undoubtedly some left-over instinct from her vampire slaying days as Buffy). When she goes upstairs, she finds a closet door taped shut. She hears what sounds like a cat inside, but when she opens the door she finds a young boy (Yuya Ozeki).

The weirdness escalates and soon the police are involved. When Karen tells Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) about the little boy, we get the feeling that Nakagawa knows more about the house than he is telling. Of course, that's exactly what makes The Grudge so compelling. It's more than a scary story. It's a mystery as well.

Granted, there are a few plot holes that made me want to ask questions. I still don't understand anyone's obsession with going BACK into a house where they saw some creepy supernatural weirdness. I don't understand how a spirit can track down its victims when they are away from the house it is haunting -- perhaps it's an American superstition, but I tend to think of haunting spirits as being tied to places (think of The Amityville Horror). Also, how could anyone sell a haunted house in good conscience? I'm thinking that realtor would get some very bad karma for what he did.

There were also some times when the questions in my mind were more amusing than annoying. I didn't understand why English-language signs kept popping up everywhere in Japan, from the restaurant where Karen's boyfriend worked to the yellow police tape that was marked with both Japanese characters and the English words "KEEP OUT." I also found it amusing when Jennifer (Clea DuVall) complained to her husband that she got lost and couldn't find anyone who spoke English. Duh! You're in Japan! Try learning the language!

The fact that The Grudge is a remake of the Japanese film Ju-on didn't matter to me one way or the other. Last year, Gore Verbinski remade the Japanese horror film Ringu (known here in the US as The Ring) and thrilled audiences. Most of them, anyway. I found the thing a bit plodding, but overall an creepy little movie. So, to be honest, I wouldn't have anticipated The Grudge at all except for two distinct differences from The Ring. First, the original Japanese director Takashi Shimizu also directed the remake. Second, Sam Raimi (director of the Evil Dead series -- and that little blockbuster known as Spider-Man 2) was executive producer of the film. Sam knows scary movies, so I was counting on him to do back the right horse.

I need not have worried. The Grudge did everything that I wanted, including an interesting mystery that made the whole film more than a mere ghost story. The movie is genuinely creepy throughout, and there are scenes that are so scary that I yelled on more than one occasion. Not the "oh, a cat jumped out and scared me" kind of scream either. It was a "oh man, I'm never going to sleep again" kind of scream.

I haven't been so creeped out in years. And it was great.

MY RATING: 8 out of 10.

RATED:
RUN TIME: 96 min.