The Grudge: Film Review

The Grudge: Film Review

Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Jacki Weaver, Demian Bichir, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Lin Shaye
Director: Nicolas Pesce

With its split time narratives and its desire to try and do something different with Ju-on, The Grudge's 2020 outing has laudable intentions.

This time around, the curse of the angry ghost is brought to America, and a cop (Riseborough, channeling Scandi chic and dour faces) sets about investigating the murders in a suburban house, that have plagued generations.

But the more she investigates, the more drawn into the world she becomes - and the more she faces the possibility she will be taken....

The Grudge has an intriguing premise - but by stretching it out across three time different periods, and chopping and changing the narrative, the film denies the movie going audience the one thing a good horror movie should give them - frights.

Less a jump fest, more a choppy psychological piece, this outing for Ju-on, which began back in the early 2000s when Ringu and its ilk were popular, feels like a frustrating exercise in tedium and endurance, a haunted house horror that barely has the frights to match its macabre machinations.

Riseborough is gritty enough, but doesn't get enough to do with a script that demands she's more dour-faced than anything else. Bichir adds yet another horror outing to his CV, but his grizzled detective does little but grumble about proceedings and warn of horrors.

Weaver impresses as a suicide assistance nurse, but with the time jumps, the film loses the build up of tensions when it needs them the most, and each set piece leads inevitably to where you expect it would - and where the script has already shown you. There's little to surprise here, making the 90 minute run time still feel like time is going backwards.

Simply put, The Grudge is a drudge, one of 2020's worst and most frustrating missed opportunities.