The Grudge Movie Review by Luke

Posted by: Goon

The first time I was intoduced to the Juon series was over a year ago. I picked up the very first V-Cinema Juon on DVD. From there on out I picked them all up in order. One of the best movies to come out of Japan. Also one of the best series to be made and have equally even better sequels. So when I heard they were doing a American remake and with orginal director, Takashi Shimizu, I couldn't wait.

The story is basically that a young woman and her son is murdered by her abusive husband. When she is murdered the rage that had built up within herself threw the years of abuse and jeaulosy is released in the house forever cursing whoever enters the home.

The movie opens with a really disturbing scene that just drops your jaw. The pace stays the way throughout the whole film. The sequencing that Shimizu uses is brilliant. Its that whole "Memento" thing going on. Different aspects of the movie come together at different points.

I wouldn't say there was any extraordinary acting in this movie but thats mainly because to be honest there isn't much acting involved in most horror films. I think Shimizu also did a good job of not giving Sarah Michelle Gellar too much screen time. He evenly distributed the screen time with all the characters in the film not showing favoritism to "more popular" American actors.

The greatest aspect as always with Juon films are the scares. It was really nice to see some of my favorite scares back for the remake as well as some new and very surprising ones. He managed to take scenes from all four films and mash them into one coherent film which I can imagine would be a difficult thing to do.

The audience was really into the film and there were also some screams which I have never heard before in a movie. So it was really pleasing to see so many peoples reactions to the film. Not my favorite among all the films but defintely a great movie.

Now this is where I have to level with people who have never seen any of the films yet. There are alot of things in the movie that remain mystery and aren't tied up in a nice neat package. That is the way most Japanese directors do things. Most Japanese are afraid of the unexplained so some of that obviously trickled into this movie. This is key at the very end of the film. The ending, though I thought it was fine, may irritate some other people. Regardless, A great movie and a must see.. 9 out of 10

Review by: Luke the "Goon"

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