Last year, director Takashi Shimizu changed the pace and atmosphere of horror cinema with his stellar film “JU-ON: The Grudge.” Now he’s tackled an American version of the film, which will be the fifth time he has directed his story about a cursed house and its ghostly inhabitants.
In this latest version, exchange student Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) is a social work student who helps a slightly catatonic old woman (played by “Twin Peak’s” Grace Zabriskie) when her usual nurse doesn’t show up for work. Simply entering the house unlocks a curse (left from a permeating bought of rage that left its mark on the home years earlier) that spreads through protagonists and minor characters alike, claiming life after life. Everyone linked to the house become afflicted with the supernatural curse, including its owners Matthew and Jennifer Williams (William Mapother, “In The Bedroom” and Clea DuVall, “Identity”), Matthew’s sister Susan (KaDee Strickland, “Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid”), a high school teacher (Bill Pullman, “Lost Highway”), as well as Karen’s boss (played by producer Sam Raimi’s always entertaining little brother Ted) and boyfriend (Jason Behr, “The Shipping News”). But the most pronounced character from the film is by far the haunted house’s Japanese architecture, which dictates both the film’s unusual pacing and spectacular camera movements.
“The Grudge” is the first feature from Sam Raimi’s (director of the Evil Dead” trilogy and “Spiderman” films) new production company, Ghost House Productions, and his deft eye for horror films definitely proved handy when it came time to adapt this Japanese export into an American affair. Keeping the film based in Japan was a perfect decision, because while it wouldn’t be hard for the plot to be transported to some unnamed city in the Midwest, the story is at its roots Japanese and would definitely not have faired as well outside its original habitat. This also allowed Shimizu a chance to let his veteran ghosts Yuya Ozeki and Takako Fuji once again reprise their roles from the original films, giving Fuji a chance to add more depth to her stalking specter via Shimizu’s extended back story.
The film’s fractured plot dissolves within a non-linear narrative structure very similar to the original, giving Shimizu another useful tool with which to pound out the frights at a relentless pace and keep viewers on their toes. Unfortunately, Shimizu loses a few of the key elements that made his other films so frightening. This time out he limits the amount of noises and disturbing sounds that constantly reverberated throughout “JU-ON.” Some of the sound effects are still present, most importantly Fuji’s death-rattle call (which becomes the film’s most memorable noise — think Jason Voorhees’ echoing inner monologue of “Kill…Die…” from the “Friday the 13th” films) and the beautiful backwards chimes, but a lot is missing and the film suffers for the lack. And a massive amount of Shimizu’s masterful in-camera special effects from “JU-ON” have been modified for American audiences, meaning a few cheap scares — which rely on nondiegetic sounds like sudden jolts in the soundtrack — have replaced some of the more interesting visual and editing tricks of the original.
Some of the scenes also feel like communications between director and actors were less than optimal, which could have easily resulted from Shimizu’s understanding and speaking little English. The displacement of American women in Japan, however, is a new plot string that does work in some subtle continuity between the two female leads, Gellar’s Karen and DuVall’s Jennifer. And the film’s almost entirely Japanese production crew paid off, lending “The Grudge” an interesting blended style, where usually any Japanese influence is bashed into oblivion by the conventions of American film. The traditional blessing before starting principal photography and no food/no shoes on set rules also seems to have acclimated most of the actors to their surroundings. This is especially evident in scenes where Karen and her boyfriend run through Tokyo streets and similar situations where the American actors relied heavily on interactions with Japan’s populace.
“The Grudge” does take a significant amount of cues from “Ringu” (which was adapted for American audiences in Gore Verbinski’s 2002 film, “The Ring”), but that can only be expected from a director who was discovered by “Ringu” producer Taka Ichise and was a student in film classes from “Ringu” screenwriter Hiroshi Takashi. Shimizu was also hired as a director after showing off two of his short films, which were massively influenced by “Ringu.” So the incessant use of creepy sound effects, multitude of scenes involving video manipulation (“The Grudge” security footage winds up being intensely similar to Sadako’s emergence from the well in “Ringu”) and a severely unhappy female antagonist are more than a little coincidental.
“The Grudge,” however, does maintain its individuality on the basis of its striking and unrelenting tense atmospherics, basically conveying perfectly that nowhere and nothing are safe. American horror films should take note of Shimizu’s magnificent use of drenching atmosphere and his beautifully persistent visual style and pacing.
Grade: B
