The Grudge
2004
**
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jason Behr, William Mapother, Clea DuVall, Ryo Ishibashi, KaDee Strickland, Grace Zabriskie, Bill Pullman
Like his original 2003 horror film Ju-on: The Grudge, Takashi Shimizu's Hollywood remake is set in Tokyo, only now the main characters are mostly American. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays an exchange student/care worker who enters the home of an elderly expat lady. The title card hints that the house was cursed when someone died there in extreme rage. Shimizu creates some effectively eerie images, but the characters are all passive, clueless victims. Nearly every scene has someone walking alone down a creaky corridor, which becomes tiresome and predictable very fast. The story turns out to be a series of scares without a beginning or an end. In other words, a perfect formula for an infinite number of sequels. So far there have been two.
