Movie title: The Grudge
Release Date: January 2020
Type of movie: Horror
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Our rating: 2/10
Re-watchability: 0/10
Welcome to my first movie review for 2021. I chose to review The Grudge, which came out in January of 2020. Frankly, I had some hope for this remake, because the original The Grudge was one of the worst horror movies I’ve seen. I’ve seen the Japanese horror movie Ju-On upon which The Grudge is based, and it is actually a pretty good horror show. The original The Grudge came out in 2003 in the US, and I felt that film was a horrible effort. Perhaps the thinking in Hollywood was to do it over the right way this time. Anyway, after seeing the original The Grudge, I felt a remake couldn’t possibly be any worse. How could anyone make a terrible movie even more terrible? Would I recommend this movie for horror movie goers, or do I recommend this movie for anyone? Get ready to be shocked.
I went into this movie with high hopes that this time it would be different. Hollywood has proven in the past they can make a decent horror movie and I loved the recent horror movie It. That was my hope, but reality can sometimes bite you in the rear. I ended up feeling like this movie was a very disoriented mess with almost no continuity or flow. The Grudge was a movie that could have been so much better but just wasn’t. It ended up feeling rushed from beginning to end, so much so I simply couldn’t enjoy watching it. The Grudge original and remake truly deserve to be forgotten in the ash heap of movie making history. It deserves to be burned, or if kept, used solely as an object lesson in what not to do when making a horror movie. The Grudge 2020 was so bad I would have fallen asleep during it, were it not for the popcorn and soda I continually consumed to keep me awake while suffering through it. I’d like to say this remake of The Grudge was very predictable and formulaic, except that would be too generous a compliment to its storyline. In short, The Grudge is not the answer to your horror movie wishes, but a true nightmare of epic proportions.
Interestingly, the original Ju-On was reasonably good horror movie, so if you don’t mind watching a Japanese movie subtitled in English, check it out. Why Hollywood couldn’t manage a decent English version of that horror movie, I have no idea. Perhaps it reflects a lack of imagination in tinsel town, or just the realization that spending $10-14 million to make it and reaping $49 million in revenue is still viewed as a win for them. For me, The Grudge remake was a gigantic mess of a movie and a total waste of an hour and a half of my time. I had some hope for this remake, but that hope didn’t last very long. This movie was a huge let down, failing to even register as scary by my standards. I found myself wondering when the heck this movie was going to end so I could go home and sleep.
I should come as no surprise this movie didn’t last long in theaters. However, it did manage to suck my joy and optimism about future horror movies so perhaps it had some longer term effect on me. My recommendation to my readers is that when this movie comes out on DVD or Netflix, skip it. You won’t be missing anything by doing that. If you really want to watch a crappy horror movie, catch it on DVD or Netflix and be prepared for a miserable movie night unless you are really into movies that are total disasters.
Do I recommend this movie for the movie goers who like horror shows? To be perfectly honest, no. I wouldn’t recommend this movie to my worst enemy, as watching it should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. It isn’t just a waste of time, it is excruciatingly painful to sit through it as you wonder “what were they thinking”? Yes, this movie really is that bad. If I could demand my time and the money back that I spent to watch it, I would. I won’t even try to explain the storyline. It jumped around and made zero sense, although I was wide awake the entire movie. There were number of characters in this film, with little effort to explain what all the characters had to do with one another. Oh, and you better have a photographic memory for most of them and where you saw them, because otherwise you can’t understand why they are dying the next time you see them. None of the characters lived long enough to have much of any relationship with the other characters. I sincerely believe this film is one of the worst horror remakes I have seen to date. No correction, it IS the worst.
I didn’t touch the storyline of this movie because frankly, it’s kind of hard to explain. The movie attempts to link the mysterious deaths of various people to a single haunted house associated with a spirit. Basically, everyone who comes in contact with that house/spirit dies. The house becomes haunted because the previous occupant came back from Japan where she came in contact with an evil house/spirit. After arriving back in the US she died along with everyone in her family. Thereafter, you live in that house, you die. You visit that house, you die. You get too close to that house or anyone you know visits or gets too close to it, you die. No one is spared because the spirit that started it all is evil. I thought it was a complete disaster to watch, because I couldn’t understand what the heck was happening or why throughout most of the film. The film came across as just a jumbled mess that made it hard to follow who was who. This is partly because no one lives long enough for you to gain any sense of familiarity with them. The storyline isn’t enjoyable or relatable. How many people do you know who die shortly after coming in contact with a house? I didn’t feel this film deserved to be made, and frankly someone ought to have put a little more thought into making it prior to ever being given a green light by the studios.
I don’t recommend this movie to my readers. It makes for a better disaster film than a horror movie, because the whole film is a disaster, start to finish. The impossible to follow storyline made it incredibly difficult to enjoy the film. Perhaps in someone’s twisted mind this film made perfect sense. But for me, it kept jumping around and the only thing that was tied together at the end was everyone introduced in the movie was dying. It clearly tried hard to be different from its predecessor in this series, and it succeeded, but just in all the worst ways. The original The Grudge was pretty bad, but this film is even worse. I don’t recommend watching it. This remake doesn’t even have any redeeming humor in it. If you decide to see it anyway, at least you have been forewarned.
Thank you for reading,
Jason
