Movie Details
Movie: The Grudge (2019)
Director: Nicolas Pesce
Cast: Tara Westwood, Junko Bailey, and David Lawrence Brown
Movie Genres: Horror/Mystery
Release date: 3 January 2020
IMDB Rating: 4.4/10
Languages: English
Duration: 1h 34m
Trailer
Synopsis
The Ju-on horror series Ju-On: The Grudge 2 will celebrate an incredible 20 years this year. During that time, she was able to overcome the borders of her homeland and spread from Japan to the whole world. This is mainly thanks to the highly successful American remake from 2004, which was shot by the director of the original film, Takashi Shimizu, and for which the audience spent almost 200 megabytes worldwide in cinemas alone. The producing studio Sony immediately sent the second “American” part to cinemas. However, he did not break the jackpot and the third part from 2009 went straight to the carriers, so the series went temporarily to the ice. Only now has she returned just like The Grudge that haunts all living things in an unrelenting quest to avenge a cruel death.
But first, answer the essential question. Do scarecrows annoy you? If so, avoid The Grudge in a big arc, because Ju-on tends to pop out at the exact moments you suspect he will. The others, who don’t mind some spilled popcorn or spilled wheels, will be rewarded with honest spirits that don’t foul unnecessarily and offer you a dense atmosphere, excellently cast roles, or a supernatural power that will force you to sleep with the light on for a few days. And avoid the bath. All this under the direction of newcomer Nicolas Pesce, who replaced Takashi Shimizu under the production supervision of Sam Raimi to prove to you that he can shoot not only small festival genre movies (My Mother’s Eyes, Piercing).
It is, of course, worth asking whether the 11 years since the last Hate is long enough to justify the creation of a new treatment. Pesce, who is also the author of the screenplay, goes for it because this year’s Hatred is not so much a standalone remake as a direct sequel. This is proven by the opening scene and one short flashback, which we will see as part of the search for the causes of all these horrors. In order not to confuse new viewers, the film is introduced with subtitles explaining what it is actually about. For this, the authors deserve a hat, because such laziness simply cannot go unnoticed. However, the cold shower is quickly remedied by the dense atmosphere of an American small town, where a widowed policewoman (Andrea Riseborough from To Leslie, Nocturnal Animals or The Death of Stalin) arrives to start a new life here with her young son.
If you are expecting the plot of the film to follow the classic path of slowly unraveling the case until the big finale involving a chase or some kind of exorcism, you will be surprised. The plot focuses more on the past than the present and brings intertwining narratives about individual persons who had the misfortune to enter the cursed house in which Ju-on settled after the first American victim brought him with him from Japan. The story thus expands into four-time planes separated from each other by several years, thanks to which Ju-on not only has much more meat from the grinder, but it allows Pesce to bring to the stage a whole series of excellently cast more or less well-known actors, for whom horror films are usually no novelty. In addition to the aforementioned Andrea Riseborough in the role of a slowly crumbling policewoman and Demián Bichir.
Together with them, Pesce managed to inhabit his Hatred with “living” and disparate characters, whose fates in a depression-soaked and alienated small town create a mosaic of familiar, yet still functional, horror properties. The point loss for unoriginality, a certain recycling of the original template (including the iconic and time-honored head-washing scene), and a story that is simpler than any Teletubbies episode are noticeable, but they cannot demolish the solid genre foundations. The new installment of The Grudge will certainly not enter The Horror Hall of Fame, but it certainly does not put the entire series to shame. And if you’ve seen the horrifying Black Christmas, you might be whetting your appetite right at the start of the year.
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