When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is
born. And when the remake of a Japanese horror film starring Sara Michelle
Gellar makes a lot of money, a sequel is born. Amber Tamblyn, who’s probably
best known to horror fans from the first five memorable minutes of director Gore Verbrinski’s
The Ring, stars here as Aubrey, the sister of Gellar’s Karen character from the
first Grudge film. Aubrey is sent to Japan by her bitter, bed-ridden mother to
find out what happened to her sister, and bring her home. Tamblyn plays Aubrey
as sort of a shy, mousey-type of woman, to whom just making the trip to Japan
would be more frightening than meeting a house full of evil spirits.
But travel to Japan she does, only to have a brief meeting with her sister in a
hospital before Karen goes berserk and needs to be strapped down to the bed for
her own good. When bringing Karen back home soon becomes impossible, Aubrey gets
caught up in a personal investigation of her own, which leads her to the haunted
house where it all began, and where it begins again--this time, with Aubrey as
the target for the deranged spirits. Like the first Grudge, the narrative here
is also split up into several different stories, all of which revolve around the
spirits. In addition to Aubrey’s story, we also follow the plight of three
school girls who attend an international high school in Japan. When they dare
one of the girls into going into the house, a childish prank turns deadly.
The third story, with Jennifer Beals playing a woman who’s moving in with her
boyfriend and his two kids, at first appears seemingly unrelated to the
others--but be patient, for director Takashi Shimizu, who once again does a
masterful job in creating some truly frightening and unsettling scenes of
supernatural horror, manages to tie it all together. Speaking of unsettling
scenes, there’s a great moment in a school counselor’s office that caught me
completely by surprise, and got right under my skin. While watching The Grudge 2,
I couldn’t help but think that they should have called this one "Still Holding
A Grudge", because The Grudge 2 basically offers more of the same chills and
thrills as seen in the first film, instead of advancing the story to the next
level. But still, if you’re looking for a good, creepy shocker without the gore,
you can’t go wrong with either of The Grudge movies.
--SF
