Even though much of the 2004 version of the J-horror “The Grudge” is loud, unapologetic cornball schlock—see the unintentionally funny scene where Bill Pullman plummets to his death from the peak of a hotel high rise—the new 2020 version produced by Sam Raimi, is one of the more muddled horror remakes in recent memory. Takashi Shimizu inadvertently spawned a franchise when he remade the 2004 version from his own Japanese horror staple “Ju-On: The Grudge” (2002) and the series comprised mainly of carefully calibrated jump scares and haunted house mumbo-jumbo. It worked for many audiences (the remake grossed over $180 million on a shoestring budget of just $10 million). Still, all of it lacked the Gothic atmosphere and gallows humor of, say, Gore Verbinski’s enduringly creepy “The Ring,” a genuinely terrific J-horror remake.
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The idea of recruiting Borderline Films director Nicolas Pesce to helm this reboot is an inspired choice—he’s the deranged visionary responsible for sickening works of modern horror such as the invasively disturbing “The Eyes of My Mother” and last year’s evocative giallo tribute “Piercing.” There’s an excellent cast too, including Andrea Riseborough, John Cho, and Jacki Weaver—this attractive package sounds like something far beyond the average studio cash grab.
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Sadly, there’s not much Pesce can do to save this new “Grudge” movie, very much a typically dull January horror product designed to sate the appetites of undemanding multiplex gorehounds. Imagination, terror, and coherence are in short supply here. Yet, it doesn’t lack in ambition – this is a severe, dour, occasionally unsettling picture that expands its scope to a broad (broad in both the good and bad sense of the term) ensemble. Pesce and cinematographer Zachary Geller drain all color and vitality from the series’ otherwise polished frames. However, as skilled as Pesce can be at conjuring unease, he hasn’t found a way to transcend the hackiest elements of the “Grudge” franchise on the whole, resulting in a film that feels too phoned-in to be truly terrifying.
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Following a rather fruitless introductory prologue set in Japan, the film introduces Detective Muldoon (Andrea Riseborough, who has the right face for this sort of movie) and her morbid, sullen partner, Goodman (Demian Bichir, playing a tormented, chainsmoking cop like he’s auditioning for the upcoming fourth season of “True Detective”), plus a pair of married realtors (John Cho and Betty Gilpin) fretting over the birth of their child, and a mentally unwell older woman (a freaky, all-in Lin Shaye) and her put-upon husband (Frankie Faison). What connects them all is a decrepit old house at 44 Reyburn Drive: a house with a terrible history and one that, yep, holds its own bitter grudge (groan).
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Pesce flaunts his skill at building and sustaining tension in the film’s early stages, and the best parts of “The Grudge” are primarily related to the film’s admittedly unsettling atmosphere. And yet, apart from one or two well-placed frights in the movie’s first act, “The Grudge” fails at being remotely scary. There’s fertile subtext here about the cyclical nature of grief and the debilitating legacy of unthinkable violence. Still, for the most part, the film is content to throw a bunch of sinister stuff at the proverbial wall and see what sticks. Every now and then, the movie mixes things up— there’s a horrifically disfigured character who seems modeled after Gary Oldman’s baddie in Ridley Scott’s “Hannibal”— but for the most part, Pesce trots out familiar “Grudge” iconography (damp-haired, demonic ghouls, creepy little girls hiding in bathtubs full of murky liquid) with increasingly diminishing returns.
“The Grudge” often feels as though it’s rotting from the inside out, and it’s never close to fulfilling even your lowest expectations of mainstream horror released in January. Granted, this “Grudge” is still better than the 2004 remake, but that’s not saying much. Nicolas Pesce is a tremendous talent with a sick imagination that is distinctively his own, but “The Grudge” feels like payday one-for-them compromise. One that unfortunately sullies and derails the reputation of an otherwise on-the-rise filmmaker who should be above this kind of second-rate material. [C-]